number 8 wire

Back behind the keyboard

2008-02-05T16:20:00.000+13:00

Hey y’all I’m changing my handle to "ropata", and writing on a new blog. I’ll leave this old thing up for a while. Yes I’ve moved a little to the left in some of my views, and I want to move away from some of my more obnoxious, Tamaki-like utterances of the past. Don’t worry, I’m still a Jesus freak. And now let the usual programming continue :)
–Blessings, (ex) peasant

Science, philosophy, genesis at Wishart's blog

2007-12-10T19:10:00.000+13:00

In case you haven't noticed, this blog is hardly maintained any more. I have been hanging around mainly at Ian Wishart's blog, "The Briefing Room" (TBR.cc), where there's some interesting controversies raging, and some highly annoying characters.

For reference: some of the major discussions of Science, Philosophy, and Genesis over at TBR.cc, newest at the top.

When science is a religion
The weaknesses of Dawkins
Which comes first, the atheist or the egghead?
Without ever invoking God, Davies argues for a grand cosmic plan
Enlightenment becomes new Dark Ages under secularism
Why Atheism is a religious belief
An amusing and quite clever take on the ID debate
Old fascists never die
In answer to Peter
Big Bang "shows fingerprints of maker"

Singing the gospel

2007-07-11T22:40:00.000+12:00

The weekend saw another of the mass-scale events designed to reinforce climate change as a form of holy scripture which only the heretical or foolish would dare to question, writes The Press in an editorial.

Live Earth was inspired by the high priest of this new theology, former United States presidential candidate Al Gore. A series of rock concerts held around the world to reinforce his gospel, it proved strangely empty, with little of the immediate impact of the previous global music-based campaigns that it was trying to emulate.

The criticism that it lacked a clear goal seems to be a fair one. The fact that it was preceded by various rock stars frantically and unconvincingly attempting to gain a footing on the climate-change bandwagon underlined the slipperiness of the whole business. Events such as Live Earth invite scepticism, and not just from those who are dubious about the true extent and causes of climate change. For one thing, it hinted at how prone the cause is to capture by group-think and political agenda. Similarly, it reflected how easy it is to let the debate slide into one-upmanship and obsessing around the edges of the problem – the futile fashion of calculating and comparing one's "carbon footprint" is the obvious case in point.

Nevertheless, it also leaves little doubt about a building public mood for action. A few people may be placated by a song lyric or a bit of posturing, but most will demand more from the leaders of governments and industry, for whom spouting on is no longer an option.

D(r)aft Statement on Religious Perversity

2007-05-30T18:57:00.000+12:00

I have sincere reservations about the intentions of those discussing the so-called "National Statement on Religious Diversity". I would prefer it to be a "National Statement on Religious FREEDOM". The pre-eminence of "The State" in Principle #1 is egregious. The claim that NZ has no established religion is anti-historical, false, and unbelievably arrogant. Principle #2 is problematic and self-contradictory. It is likely to be used to enforce "secular" principles on believers and violate their personal values & beliefs.

On Maori TV last night Dover Samuels stated that (paraphrase) "religious beliefs DO NOT MATTER; what matters is peace and harmony". I am all for peace and harmony, but Samuels' statement is a typical ignorant leftist platitude. Peace and harmony do not exist when someone's religion teaches them to kill the infidel, nor when someone's "enlightened" secularism tells them to outlaw homeschooling (Germany), smacking (NZ), freedom of speech (Australia, Canada), hiring practices of Catholic social services (UK).

Direct Quotes from the proposed Statement:

The State seeks to treat all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law. NEW ZEALAND HAS NO OFFICIAL OR ESTABLISHED RELIGION.
New Zealand upholds the right to freedom of religion and belief and the right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of religious or other belief.

Thankfully, dear reader, I have come into possession of Labour's secret "Statement of Religious Perversity", which reveals their altogether benevolent scheme to lead NZ on the path of (self-)righteousness.

There is only one State, and Helen is its Prophet
The people shall respect no power or authority other than the edicts of Helen and her Great Bureaucracy
The people shall hold no "fact", "truth claim" or "belief" to be propositionally true, ultimately true, verifiable, or legitimate -- other than the statements in this document
The people shall hold no values, mores, or cultural standards higher than the Eternal Secular Principles of "tolerance, diversity, and inclusion".
Any person who contravenes (3) by publishing any kind of "fact, truth claim, or belief" shall be deemed a bigoted violator of (4); subject to public vilification; proclaimed a public nuisance; and investigated by the People's Police Force
The people shall respect the values of the Green Party and the illustrious Susan Bradford, whose research has found that 80% of New Zealanders are criminally violent to children
In light of (6), and some disturbing references to a primitive Judaic belief system in the history books, an extensive re-education programme shall be implemented. All references to "Israel", "the Holocaust", "Jesus Christ", "Christianity" shall be expunged.
You shall not covet your neighbour's property, unless you happen to work for the IRD.
You _shall_ covet your neighbour's ass. Especially if thy name is David Benson-Pope
Thou shalt enlarge the power and glory of the Prophet Helen, her almighty State, and its many-splendoured Departments, at every PR opportunity

Principalities and Powers

2007-05-29T18:48:00.000+12:00

Clark's radical communist coterie is promoting a religion of secularism, in which the State becomes God, and any prior claims to truth or authority are deemed traitorous. It's not lunacy, it's a long range plan of sinister subtlety.

MrTips writes:

In each and every one of these cases the approach of the factions pushing these barrows of societal change has been to: 1) open the issue up for debate and then lie about the data, 2) lie about the real intentions of the legislation, 3) brand any opposing argument as hateful, bigoted or not trustworthy, 4) buy the votes of the younger generation (ie. less than 25) as they are more easily sucked in by the dollar and 5) turn votes of conscience into matters of political survival for MPs by whipping them into line. These are the traits of a dictatorship, driven by complete cynicism for the general population and lack of respect for due Parliamentary process.

But why would such people behave in this manner: what could possess them to be so malevolent towards society? The answer obviously is that they don't think they are being malevolent, rather they view their ideas as our salvation.

One would think there was an unseen mastermind playing a discordant tune, and Labour are mesmerized puppets, manipulated by their own arrogance, lust for power, and scorn for tradition.

S. M. Hutchens observes:

[According to the ever-encroaching secularism,] Christ, the white male in his perfection, is the (as yet mostly) unnamed devil lurking behind every substantial evil that plagues the modern world, der ewige Jude, no longer the Abrahamic man through whom all the nations are blessed, but the source of the earth’s sorrows, the pale Galilean at whose breath the world turns cold, and we—we, who are too wise to believe in Satan have been trained in the name of every good thing to see the world through demonic eyes.

Unfortunately... "for conservative "classical" liberals, we are generally faced with an odious choice between the stupid party and the evil party"

A prime example of deep stupidity and grandiose error is Marxism and all of its many polluted streams, branches, creeks and crocks. That variants of this falsehood still proliferate on the left today means that, as always, intelligence alone is no unknowculation against evil, darkness, and error. Hardly.

For conservative "classical" liberals, we are generally faced with an odious choice between the stupid party and the evil party. We generally align ourselves with the former, since the former is at least susceptible to our influence, whereas the latter is not. Someone who has truly given himself over to evil is not going to be persuaded by truth. His intelligence is in the service of forces he neither sees nor understands, and there is just no point of entry in dealing with him, since he is not lacking information as such but light. Truly, you can hand them the truth on a silver platter, and they will not only reject it but be quite hostile to it.

I no longer think politics has much say in the future of mankind. However, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been the mightiest civilising force in history, and the Son of God has plenty to say about the future.

Some inspired words from Psalm 146:

Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

Enshrining Rebellion

2007-05-04T18:57:00.000+12:00

How dare these petty bureaucrats dictate to reasonable parents. What pigheaded utopianism could possibly commit such a crime against common sense. Bradford's bill is no law. It is lawlessness in every home.

Leftist academics and politicians are a very strange breed. Their enlightened mission is to free the misguided, grubby masses from the shackles of tradition, morals, personal property, and responsibility. It's Helen's diabolical marxist dream come true.

The consequences of this slimy piece of legislation are already being seen. Labour's pet union, the teachers, will be reporting all misdemeanours to Big Sister [See NZConservative.blogspot.com]

Q: What kind of self-righteous a**hole thinks they know better than 80% of the population, rams through controversial laws with no regard to the long term outcomes, & attempts to turn human nature on its head?

A: A deluded fool? OR A dishonest, aggressive ideologue who is determined to mould NZ into the image of failed totalitarian toilets like Sweden, Cuba, or Russia.

PS. Happy ANZAC day Helen. May all true-hearted Kiwis see through your lies and vote against the corrupt, power-mad Labour party.

References:

NZConservative: Worry about teachers asking about smacking

Herald: Your Views: The debate on the smacking deal continues

Ian Wishart: Labour adopts version of Key s59 amendment

Advanced Bible Quiz

2007-02-05T18:09:00.000+13:00

Alistair.Adversaria has created an Advanced Bible Quiz. Certainly a challenge! Give it a go. Looks like I need to read more of the Word, less of the Net :o/

You rank 38% on the biblical comprehension scale.

You obviously have a respectable level of biblical knowledge. However, you fall just a little short of the standard of this advanced biblical comprehension test. Perhaps a more focused Bible-reading plan would improve your biblical knowledge.

How Well Do You Know Your Bible?
Quizzes for MySpace

POP goes the fulminating atheist bubble

2006-11-24T18:51:00.000+13:00

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
--Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)

The Observer's Robin McKie writes of the demise of String Theory (HT: the Press). For decades physicists have been enamoured with String Theory's promise to explain the universe in a handful of complex equations. Now many are starting to fear their theories have led down a cul-de-sac. (expert opinion here and here.)

Dark Energy remains "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". LATimes correspondent Thomas H Maugh reports on observations from the Hubble telescope. Apparently dark energy, the enigmatic force that is causing the universe to expand, has been present and constant for at least 9 billion years, a finding that eliminates many of the theories developed to explain its mysterious role in the cosmos.

Research into the Human Genome has discovered dramatic variation in the "copy number" of genes. "The copy number variation that researchers had seen before was simply the tip of the iceberg, while the bulk lay submerged, undetected." But what no one anticipated after the full sequence was finally published was just how complicated the genetic landscape would become. Instead of carrying just two copies of each gene - one from each parent - it now appears that we have several copies of certain key genes. On top of the variation in the DNA sequence between people, there seems now to be an added layer of complexity.

And yet we see high-profile anti-theists like Harris, Dawkins, Moran, and Myers pontificating at a forum called "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival". The New York Times headlined the event as a Free-for All on Science and Religion.

We're being talked about (looking at you NotPC), I mean religious believers, as a problem that has to be dealt with somehow. The problem is that we are the ones who are threatening the planet and, according to Nobel (you know the "Peace Prize" people) laureate Steven Weinberg "the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief."

Another commandment from Weinberg "Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization." Never mind that science itself is a gift of Christianity:

The scientific quest found fertile soil only when this faith in a personal, rational Creator had truly permeated a whole culture, beginning with the centuries of the High Middle Ages. It was that faith which provided, in sufficient measure, confidence in the rationality of the universe, trust in progress, and appreciation of the quantitative method, all indispensable ingredients of the scientific quest.
-- Stanley L. Jaki, SCIENCE AND CREATION : from eternal cycles to an oscillating universe, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1974

Lawrence Krauss called for respect for religious belief and for scientists to "stop being so pompous." Dawkins announced he was "utterly fed up with the respect that we -- all of us, including the secular among us --are brainwashed into bestowing on religion."

No. 11 on Amazon is another atheist screed — "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. His epiphany came, he tells the Washington Post, when he took the drug Ecstasy before dropping out of Stanford and "realized that it was possible to be a human being who wished others well all the time, reflexively."

Harris' 2005 attack on religion, "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason," got a prestigious award from the PEN literary association and still ranks No. 33 on Amazon. Harris is as eager as Dawkins to kidnap your kids and bring on the day when "the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Muslim or Jewish be widely recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is."

Imagine the government forcibly preventing you from inculcating your children with your values and convictions, and substituting its own instead. Even when it's Darwin — instead of Hitler or Mohammed — being worshiped by the state, fascism is fascism.

Science can tell us many things. But it's running out of the ability to even get to the bottom of things: infinite universes and mult-dimensionalities that we can never test or see. The honest scientists admit this is getting metaphysical, even philosophical. If they can get metaphysical, why can't we get metaphysical? Science just cannot tell us everything that is true. And besides, aren't we also interested in the Good and Beautiful? Will science give us the blueprints for those things? It can't give us blueprints for reality as we live and experience it. Or maybe it's all an evolutionary illusion? Where is the proof of that?

Finally, science cannot answer the most important question that we have before us today: just exactly what is man? What are we for? If you're limited to what's in the bag of tools of science, then you're a beast. Or maybe just a viper.

Welsh forgot to laugh

2006-11-24T18:13:00.000+13:00

Chris Rattue of the Herald penned some vulgar but funny commentary on the state of Welsh rugby. The once-hearty Cymry apparently can't take a joke. One of the (numerous) outraged Herald correspondents, claims NZ can't beat the Welsh place name, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Sorry dude, but the longest place name recognised by the Guinness Book of Records is in NZ: the East Coast town of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauotamateturipukakapikimaungahoro-Nukupokaiwhenua kitanatahu (Taumata for short). It translates as the 'place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as land-eater, played his flute to his loved one'.

Also, Māori is more poetic than the mangled Welsh Gaelic!

Postmodern prophets: Milligan and Marx

2006-06-29T00:29:00.000+12:00

Here's my personal attempt to outdo the postmodernist essay generator. This post was sparked by some philosophical emails flying around at work, analyzing the works of two great 20th-century philosophers:

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made!
-- Groucho Marx

Money can't buy you happiness.. but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
-- Spike Milligan

My observation:
Spike Milligan's problems exemplified the philosphical conundrums inherent in challenging the paradigms of a modernist culture with deconstuctivist irony and consequent existential confusion related to the perception of departure from established social norms. However such norms are an illusion propagated by those attempting to conflate their countercultural ideology with cultural tradition. The enterprise is doomed to fail, for the prevailing cultural notion of "truth" is no longer a concrete concept highlighted by its counterpoint "error". Truth in the contemporary conception is a plurifom abstraction ultimately signifying nothing.
-- <:ob

Theistic Evolution

2006-06-28T23:15:00.000+12:00

Hi to my 2 readers, I'm back! (for now).

Enough heresy hunting, here's some Orthodoxy. This position is fairly complex and subtle, but I think (and believe) that it gels most effectively with science and the Christian faith.

Anti-science Creationists like to cite supposed negative consequences of teaching evolution, particularly the descent of Man. I could write equally disparaging things about silly creationist models that are based on bizarre, selective misreadings of the physical evidence. Asserting young-earth creationism also implies the creator is out to deceive the world, most of the worlds scientists are deceived or malicious, and reality is an illusion.

Theistic evolution is good science *precisely because* it is compatible with evolution -- the standard scientific model for the origin of life. Evolution is based on facts and evidence. Who cares if Theistic Evolution is "good" theology! Is it TRUE? Is the Bible true? I say yes to both questions.

And in fact Theistic Evolution is good theology because:
a) the big bang theory (attested by cosmic background radiation, red shifts etc) implies an uncaused First Cause (God)
b) there's no need to take Genesis 1 so literally
c) it's the Catholic Church's position on the question of origins
d) it acknowledges the unseen hand of God throughout history -- and that's compatible with an observable fact: God is invisible. Theologically it's uncontroversial to say that to us Earthlings, God's glory is veiled, but He is transcendent and immanent.
e) it shows that God is a God of order, sustaining Creation by His word (law). YEC implies God changes the laws of physics on a capricious whim.
f) humanity's part in evolution, and God's patience in developing the species, shows that our material existence is of great value, and our sojourn on Earth is part of the grand design. This contrasts with the Gnosticism inherent in anti-science creationism.

Here are some examples of how it fits with the Bible.

Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Ecclesiastes 3 even explicitly states that men are beasts and that a man has no preeminence above a beast!
18 "I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"

Isaiah 45:18
For this is what the LORD says—
he who created the heavens, he is God;
he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it;
he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited—
he says:
"I am the LORD, and there is no other."

Romans 1:19
Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Science is about knowing, while religion is about believing. In John 20:29 Jesus said,
Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

This post was motivated by some randomly googled rhetoric.
Some of the material above was 'borrowed' from 'Confronting creationism in science class'

I highly recommend these thoughtful sites:
Theistic-evolution.com
Dr. L. G. Collins

To my fundamentalist friends

2006-03-01T01:47:00.000+13:00

Many of my friends think Young-earth Creationism is the only real "Christian" opinion about the origins of life, the universe, and everything. Oh dear. So I've cobbled together some of the best stuff I could find to support the FAR more rational position of Theistic Evolution.

This is the site that switched the lights on for me:
http://www.talkorigins.org/
Here's a complete rebuttal of the young-earth pseudoscience:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
They also have a huge "index to creationist claims", this link covers young-earth arguments:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CD

Here's another brief summary of Creationism and Intelligent Design:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat09.html#Q01A

Quote from PBS.org:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/faith/index.html

"For many people of various faiths, support for the scientific theory of evolution has not supplanted their religious belief. And throughout the modern Judeo-Christian tradition, leaders have asserted that evolutionary science offers a valid perspective on the natural world. They say that evolution is consistent with religious doctrine and complements, rather than conflicts with, religion.

There are, however, some Christians -- in particular, fundamentalists and some evangelicals -- who perceive a conflict between evolution and their literal interpretation of the Bible."

A library's worth of evidence supporting Evolution:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/index.html

American Scientific Affiliation; Science from a Christian perspective:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/index.html

Converging lines of Evidence in support of Evolution:
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/FEvolutionCase.htm

A quote from St. Augustine: (I discussed this in an earlier post).

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions,"

Christians do not have a monopoly on the truth. A bit of humility and respect for the centuries of painstaking work by generations of scientists would not be amiss. The Bible supports the notion of critical thinking:

Acts 15:6,7a
The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them ...

Acts 17:11
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Also, the Bible itself is not ALL meant to be taken literally!
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH102.html

2 Corinthians 3:6 says of the new covenant, "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
1 Corinthians 9:9-12 says that one of the laws of Moses is figurative, not literal.
Galatians 4:24 says that the story of Abraham is an allegory.
Jesus frequently taught in parables, with the obvious intention that the lesson from the story, not the details of the story, was what was important.

(OK the above link is a bit worrying but it's worth thinking about)

Lastly, I think the Bible appears to be in favour of Intelligent Design, but ID is too new and it's facing an uphill battle. The next few years should be interesting, if a philosophy more explicitly religious in nature were to spread through academia.

Violent Justice

2006-02-22T23:45:00.000+13:00

In response to this thread at Pontifications, here's a quote from "The Reckoning", by James Huggins, pp139-140. In the words of character Malachi Halder:

[quote]
Violence is an ugly thing. I deplore it. But not as you might believe.

I believe that violence is an terrible thing, a tragic thing. But I have lived a long time, and I have seen the evil done by men, and I have learned that not all violence is unjust.

Did you know that the Greek word diakonoi, used to designate those who teach the God's Scriptures in church is the same Greek word used in the Bible to designate those who wield the sword to establish justice on Earth?

Strange, is it not, that the Bible would use the same word diakonoi, to describe both those who teach the Word of God and those of a government who wield the sword, establishing by physical force God's code for moral justice? And this, among other reasons, is why I believe we must confront these people, even to the point of using physical force, if necessary, to defend both ourselves and others.

Many Christians feel that any type of violence is wrong. That is foolishness. It is God who established man's moral code of conduct to be a reflection of His own holy character. In truth, it is a simple thing. But there is an aversion to responsibility in the world, and men may conjure reasons to the horizon to explain away their laziness and lack of courage. But in essence I will say that God had given man a moral code, and that moral code requires man to enforce justice, to deliver punishment, and to protect the needy. So in order to accomplish these tasks, God long ago bestowed upon man the solemn right to use force even physical violence. You see, God values justice on the Earth very highly. Even the death penalty was ordained by God as just punishment for certain crimes committed by man. So this argument that all violence is wrong is not only unbiblical, it is immoral.

"What about 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord;'?" you ask. True. And there will surely be vengeance in the world to come. And God does forbid vengeance for personal satisfaction. But that does not mean God is reserving all dispensation of justice for the hereafter. That manner of logic is foolishness. God intended that just and moral men would reflect His holy nature by inflicting justice upon those who would oppress the Earth. Anything less than this would lead to monstrous cruelty, anarchy, and unbridled chaos. As Christian men we should not stand to the side, arms folded, praying and watching passively while cruel beings stride arrogantly and mercilessly past, grinding the broken bodies of the weak, of children and those who cannot defend themselves into the dust! No! We must reach out with strong hands. And with strong minds to lay hold of these murderers, yes, even shed their blood if necessary, to bring an end to their cruelty.

It was God Himself who placed such an inestimable value on human life. And we also must place such a value. We cannot allow men to terrorize with death and violence and oppression. And if it is necessary to use force to stop them, then we must use whatever force is required. All men have a moral obligation to defend the weak, to protect the poor. Anything less than this is cowardice. To say we must not use violence because violence is immoral is only a cowardly excuse for escaping the responsibility that man has been so solemnly granted by an omnipotent God, a god who, since the beginning, has used His servants to strike down those who would so oppressively shed the blood of man.

If this argument for pacifism were taken to the logical conclusion, no one would be able to serve in as president, as a mayor, senator, police officer, or in the military. Because all of those offices endorse the use of force, even physical violence to the point of terminating human life. It is sadly and often a necessity of life, and I have not been a stranger to it. It is a solemn responsibility that I have sorrowfully accepted, and I will not use my own cowardice or any complacent, isolationist perversity to separate myself from the hard truth that man must sometimes shed blood to serve and honour God.
[quote]

One of the strongest arguments I have read is this;

This is not politically correct advice. But I think it’s time to start being blunt. One of the major problems is the unwillingness of liberal enlightened people in the west to recognize danger when it is approaching. I think Islamic immigration should be banned in Europe for at least ten years. Our own immigration laws are so restrictive already that it is not a major issue here. But in Europe and many other culturally Christian parts of the world there is a serious danger that they are going to be overwhelmed in an Islamic tidal wave. And their total inability to see Islam as something other than a benign religion is very frightening.

It reminds me of a story I once heard. There was an old man who walked into an Irish bar and ordered a drink. The bartender started to converse with the customer and the topic came up of ancestry. The old man said he was Jewish and his family had been wiped out by the Nazis. The Irish bartender sighed in sympathy and asked why the man’s family did not flee when the Nazis took over. The old man said they were an educated and cultured people. They could no believe anyone was capable of such evil. The bartender said his family knew that the Jews were going to be massacred almost as soon as Hitler took office. “How is that?” asked the old man in disbelief. He replied “Because Hitler said he would do it. And while my family was not educated or cultured, no Irishman has ever underestimated man’s capacity for evil. We know better from experience.”

The power of words

2005-11-22T18:00:00.000+13:00

I was recently dismayed to discover that my writings have travelled further than I expected, and to the hurt of an innocent person. I'm mortified by my naïveté and lack of consideration for people named.

Blogging has been a huge distraction to me, from more pressing (mundane but important) matters that are overdue for my attention. I'm not sure if I will post again. If I do, it will be with far more reflection, and far less righteous indignation.

May the Good Lord bless you, and guard your hearts and minds as you travel the web.

Tips for Blog Readers

2005-10-04T18:01:00.000+13:00

A Newsreader allows you to read your favourite sites all in one place. It's way faster than collecting a million bookmarks and clicking though them all. The most popular service out there is Bloglines, I use it all the time.

Most blogs provide a 'feed' that can be aggregated by newsreader programs. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a feed format, that simplifies the HTML on a page and (mainly) just serves the headings and text from each article. So your browser doesn't waste time loading heaps of complicated HTML and images.

Bloglines is particularly handy because it keeps track of what you have already read and only presents unread articles to you. It also includes handy features such as clipping interesting articles you want to hang on to, and an 'easy subscribe' function to add a site to your collection. You can even list your bloglines subscriptions as a blogroll, like the list to the right.

Even if a website doesn't have a newsfeed (also termed 'syndication, RSS, XML, Atom'...) you can create one using a Scraper tool. My favourite used to be RSSxl, but it seems to be offline :(. Instead I am now using FeedFire, which is much the same, but less customisable (unless you pay $$$). Tech author Robin Good's site references more scrapers such as RapidFeeds, Grouper, Script4RSS, myrsscreator.com, -- which I have not tried yet.

I hope this makes your browsing faster and more informative!

Critical Thinking and Christians

2005-10-03T18:47:00.000+13:00

A few thoughts about the sad lack of critical thinking skills amongst my Christian brethren.

Trevor Mander of Cultwatch critiques Bob Cornuke with a summary paper "Bob Cornuke Problems"
Gelf Magazine's "gelflog" critiques Amway in "Pyramid Scheme Profiling"
The Creation Research Institute and 'Answers in Genesis' are little more than money making schemes churning out books for the credulous

The problem is most people (not just Christians) lack the scientific education and sophistication to judge whether a claim is bogus. The media does not help either; Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column corrects some egregious examples.
Here's the mandatory Bible quote (many more to come!):

Matthew 7:15,16
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.

Acts 15:6,7a
The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them ...

Acts 17:11
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Why ID is OK

2005-09-28T22:01:00.000+12:00

Recent wrangling by The Everlasting Man (in the news here and here) shows a passing familiarity with the arguments for Intelligent Design. The mechanical arguments proposed to bolster ID (irreducible complexity, specified complexity, mini machines?!?, poking holes in the fossil record) are not overly convincing, and have not merited publication in a peer reviewed academic journal.

I commend to readers, the words of Augustine:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

I think ID shows promise in the fields of philosophy, cosmology, and epistemology. ID is inherently metaphysical. It also powerfully argues in favour of human dignity and personal responsibility.

Science actually grew from a worldview founded upon the Bible. As our society turns away from the Creator, it has returned to useless superstitions and ignorance of science. It's ironic that the scientific establishment, bastion of free thought, should be so hostile to dissent.

In this old Civil Unions thread I mused on this very topic:

I spent some time in the university science library trying to reconcile the claims of creationist "science", against tenets of the Christian faith, and the mountain of evidence for evolution. The only solution that I believe respects both science and the Bible, is the Catholic position of "theistic evolution".

Like Augustine I deeply regret the pseudoscience propagated in churches and elevated to an article of faith. No doubt it has caused difficulties to many faithful people who understand science. For a long time I struggled to reconcile the revelations of faith I have received, with the unscientific things I was taught by people I respect.

In non-traditional churches particularly, they seem to delight in their "superior knowledge" of theories such as the "discoveries" of Bob Cornuke or Intelligent Design advocates. It's a pain because I believe the church DOES have a lot of spiritual insight. But a humble attitude in matters of science would be more appropriate, in light of the dedication of hundreds of academic lifetimes spent discovering the secrets of the universe that God has made.

There are a few synthesising thinkers out there, such as John Polkinghorne or Stanley Jaki, but their scholarship is out of reach of the less scientifically inclined. People are like sheep.

Sheer causality takes us back to the Big Bang or whatever is the current cosmological model. While not particularly fond of "God-of-the-gaps" models (theologically, God is transcendent and immanent in relation to creation), this makes a big space for God, the uncaused First Cause.

Just because we can't detect Dark Matter does not mean it's not there.

I also touched on the scientific enterprise here and here. A couple of selected observations:

Evolution does not preclude the existence of God. Evolution challenged the preconceptions of the established worldview. Nowadays the scientific "no divine intervention" assumption, has been extended to assert soulless materialism in every aspect of life, and tear down any claim to transcendent values such as Right and Wrong. The existence of God is by no means a settled debate in philosophy. The life and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most thoroughly attested event in human history (manuscript, inductive, historical), exceeding the evidence for Winston Churchill for example. The Catholic position of "theistic evolution" offers a coherent synthesis between Christianity and Science.
There are certain assumptions that science makes to work eg. that the creation is an orderly place, that human reasoning can be used as a tool in the search for knowledge of the creation, and so on. Religion, namely Christianity, provides the theological underpinning for these metaphysical assumptions. This is why Europe has seen the longest sustained period of scientific development. (read Stanley Jaki on this - fascinating). All other ancient cultures stagnated scientifically and mathematically because their theology was flawed.

UPDATE: More comments at Sir Humphrey's and Philosophy, etc. See also the links to the right, under 'Science'. The thread has also been taken up at Jarrod's place and Home, Throne & Altar. This subject wears me out ...

It’s not the economy stupid

2005-09-28T19:41:00.000+12:00

In a classic defense of Conservative thinking, Home Throne Altar highlights Roger Douglas's 1996 book "Completing the Circle". Although vilified by the left, he reveals deep concern for balancing social justice, democracy, and capitalism. In Douglas's own words:

RD: The Left continues to promote a system that ends up making hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders and Australians dependent on the state. Dependency is the worst thing you can do to any individual. The Left claim to care, but their answer is just to throw more money at the problems. If 'tax and spend' was the answer, the problems would have been solved a long time ago.

(Incidentally, this related article challenges the belief that most people on welfare really want to work).

Bruce Logan commented thus:

Even Roger Douglas appears to be going back to his roots. In his new book “Completing the Circle” written in bold (if you please), we find “The Sins of the parents are visited on the children to the second and third generation.” He goes on to say, in reference to welfare that, “the only moral or ethical policy is one that works.”

Both are not quite right. Lady Thatcher’s grandmother would not have talked of values; she would have spoken of virtues. It is only in our time that the basics for moral behaviour has become relativised while enduring and universal virtues have become personalised to values.

And Sir Roger misquotes the Biblical text. The original has “fathers” not “parents”. Although you would not think so today, with one third of our kids without a live-in father, it was fathers who were traditionally responsible for family moral guidance.

What is the point of raising this? I’m talking about an unpopular topic—ethics and fathers. In the present environment it is not easy to live a life of integrity based on truth. And it is not easy to resist playing the cynic. It is not easy to live a life of practical honesty and moral concern. Parents find it very hard to discipline children because the confidence of a shared social norm is not there. Families cannot easily survive in such a hostile climate. Why?
Lessons from the past are disregarded.
Relativism destroys one of the most important roles of the family—that of passing on from generation to generation those things that are true. Nothing is true therefore there is nothing to pass on.We undervalue the nurturing role of mothers and the protective role of fathers.
Children cannot learn responsibility because the context and reasons for being responsible are taken away.
Marriage and commitment are undervalued so people enter sexual relationships too early and too carelessly.
Children have no heroes.

Canary in the Mine speaks of the uneasy relationship between capitalism and democracy with the following:

Capitalism thrives on change—it inspires new technologies, products and profit opportunities. Democracy resists change—it creates powerful constituencies with a stake in the status quo. Capitalism (by which I mean an economic system that relies heavily on markets and private ownership) and democracy need each other. The one generates rising living standards; the other cushions capitalism's injustices and, thereby, anchors public support. But this mutual dependence is tricky because if democratic prerogatives are overused, they may strangle capitalism.

The answer? Here are some ideas.

Abridged too far?

2005-09-28T18:42:00.000+12:00

A little Canary told me an interesting story:

A "hurried" generation who "don’t know anything about the Bible - or Christianity" - this week received the most condensed paraphrase of the Bible to date. Author Revd Martin Hinton describes his 57-page The 100-minute Bible as "a gateway to the Bible for everybody". The ex-headmaster dedicated two years to writing a single narrative, spanning Genesis to Revelation. "We have sacrificed poetry to clarity", he admitted, in the aim of presenting anyone "in an overwhelmingly secular society … with the story and what Christianity is all about".

The funky e-holiness blog has an extract of the Sermon on the Mount; here follows a portion:

Much of Jesus’ teaching was brought together when, seated on a hillside, he spoke to his disciples about life in the kingdom of God. He taught that true happiness comes from having the right attitudes. Those who are humble, concerned about the world’s sinfulness, gentle, devoted to goodness, merciful, single-minded in God’s service, and peace-lovers will be blessed by God. Those of his followers who are persecuted in this world should rejoice, because they will have a rich reward in the next.

Jesus emphasised that he had not come to destroy the moral demands of the Jewish Law but to fulfil them. He taught that it is not enough not to commit murder; the anger which can lead to murder must be set aside too. It is not enough not to commit adultery; lustful thoughts must be set aside too. It is not enough to keep only our solemn promises; we should always mean what we say.

The Guardian blog has challenged readers to summarise the Bible in 100 words! My attempt went like this:

In the beginning God: Father, Son, and Spirit, made all things. God loved Man like a son, placing eternity in his soul, but Man chose to turn away. Man filled the earth with unspeakable atrocities, so God started again with Noah. Man still ignored God when he spoke through Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and David. So God became a man, to try and draw people to his Father heart. Man killed God, and Satan rejoiced. But this death brought redemption and the Spirit of God to dwell in men. God's kingdom on Earth has begun. Praise the Lord! Amen.

Debate or Power Trip?

2005-08-31T17:27:00.000+12:00

In the light of our Beloved Leader's behaviour in a recent debate, consider this quote from a famous American, Samuel Adams:

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

Oh, how far we have 'advanced' in this brave new century. Our enlightened media chose to pillory Dr. Brash for his perceived crime of sexism. Is this what the future holds under Labour? National Radio's Worldwatch last night was a shocking look into the "Men are Animals" movement in Sweden.

The Human Zoo

2005-08-30T16:43:00.000+12:00

Colin James of the Herald claims that there's a change in the wind. The winds of postmodern, materialist philosophies have blown through academia with their idealised and fictional view of the human condition. For example, Larry Summers' observation of statistical data pointing to innate gender differences provoked an outraged response from the feminist lobby. The social sciences have been particularly affected;

Psychologists Rogers H. Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings have written a very important book on this subject entitled, "Destructive Trend in Mental Health: The Well-intentioned Path to Harm." Neither Wright nor Cummings have a history of conservative ideology but they both agree that modern psychology is being driving more by politics than by legitimate science. Cummings writes, "Psychology and mental health have veered away from scientific integrity and open inquiry, as well as from compassionate practice in which the welfare of the patient is paramount. Psychology, psychiatry, and social work have been captured by the ultraliberal agenda, much of which we agree with as citizens. However, we are alarmed with the damaging effect it is having on our science, our practice and our credibility."

The London Zoo has now gotten in on the act, sowing confusion in young minds with a bizarre exhibit:

According to news reports, the human "captives" in "The Human Zoo" exhibit at the London Zoo are identified by a sign that reads, "Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment."

The London Zoo's Web site identifies "The Human Zoo" in these terms: "The four day event aims to demonstrate the basic nature of man as an animal and exhibit the impact that Homo sapiens have on the rest of the animal kingdom."
...
Observing the scene, several children asked, "Why are there people in there?" Polly Wills, spokeswoman for the London Zoo, was ready with an answer. "Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals . . . teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate." She admitted that some zoo visitors might see the exhibit as just a way to "have a gawk at people," but she clearly has a larger purpose behind the display. She wants to redefine what it means to be human.
...
The idea that humans are "not that special" is the central theme of the London Zoo's exhibit. Agence France-Presse reported that the zoo released a statement indicating that the purpose of the display was "to highlight the spread of man as a plague species."

In the light of these distortions, is it any wonder that Intelligent Design has gained such traction in the community? (I am undecided whether ID is valid, this guy says so, but this one is against).

I hope New Zealand is indeed on the cusp of a major change of direction, as Colin James indicates:

Don Brash's quaint, or disingenuous, comment on being courteous towards a belligerent Helen Clark was not just gender politics. It took us into a branch of one of the deep contexts of this election, our very liberal society.

The branch Brash touched on is civility. In our sorts of societies the rules by which we rub along have frayed, or seem to have. Deference, respect and courtesy seem to have vanished into "me"-centred consumerism.
...
This was a tightly corseted society in the 1960s. Now nearly anything goes, thanks to the generation who shouted down Sir Keith Holyoake in 1969 and then revolutionised the economy and value system in the 1980s.
...
In 2003 Michael Cullen admonished the Labour conference not to get too far ahead of its core voters' understanding and tolerance.

He had a point. Wage-workers, once Labour's core vote, are no longer locked in. A much higher proportion of "blue collars" now vote National than 30 years ago, when Sir Robert Muldoon first attracted the conservatives among them.
...
Might civil/moral conservatives here come to operate a similar long lever through the National Party? No one knows. But it is at least possible that this election is on the cusp of a general reversal from liberalisation to a conservative track, that this is one of the election's deep undercurrents.

If so, what is that undercurrent's wellspring? Cultural security: "What's happening to my country?" We are used to examining elections in terms of economic, social and physical security. Cultural security is now firmly part of the mix.

I for one feel totally alienated by Labour's constant pandering to special interests at the expense of "mainstream New Zealand" (to coin a phrase). They have fashioned NZ into their flawed collectivist vision; but Kiwis with a greater sense of purpose and direction for this country won't accept the lowest-common-denominator approach.

National and ACT are the lone voices in Parliament speaking of a future where people can improve their lot, and achieve excellence. Sounds better to me than being reduced to a caged primate dependent on peanuts from the egregious Labour Government.

UPDATE: Here are a few relevant links,
Welcome to Neverland
God's cure for the West
The 2005 New Zealand Mindset List

The Dismal Science

2005-08-30T12:29:00.000+12:00

This description of Economics was coined by Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle in 1849. Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost has an excellent Christian perspective on market economics.

Attitudes toward the market economy, however, have less to do with the political spectrum than they do with the conception of who should retain control over economic life. Progressives, fearing that no one is in control and that powerful will take advantage of the weak, believe the state must step in to prevent inequitable and unjust outcomes. Conservatives (as we would define them today), by contrast, put their faith in the system itself and believe that left unhindered by the state, is sufficient to lead to the best possible end result. Libertarians, who view markets as morally neutral, contend that the individual, when allowed total liberty, will usher in the ideal end state. While all of these positions have some merit, they all ultimately fail
...
If governmental intervention is not the answer, how then should we show concern for the poor? By providing them the opportunities, the resources, and the freedom to more fully enter the market economy. As McGurn points out, "For the poor the real danger is almost never markets and almost always the absence of them." "It strikes me as not a coincidence," says McGurn, "that the God who made thinking beings in his own image appears to have put us in a world in which our wealth and well-being depend not only on our own freedom but that of our neighbors."

How odd it is that we believe that free markets are beneficial for our own lives yet reject it as a solution for our neighbors. We wouldn't accept having our own economic freedom and access to markets stifled by an intrusive government yet we often believe this is the best option for "the poor", whether in our own inner cities or on the continent of Africa. Why is there two sets of standards for how to increase freedom and prosperity?
...
Surely it is arrogant for us to pray for miracles to relieve drought and poverty when God has already handed us the means to do so - markets. Again, however, we rarely hear moral criticism of those who refuse the miracle of the market and insist that God (or someone) perform the far greater miracle of making economic planning work.

This raises an interesting question for Christians: Does God's sovereignty not extend to markets? If so, then why do we expect, as Morris says, for God to circumvent the institution he has created and provided for our well-being by providing a "miracle?" The primary reason, in my opinion, is that we no longer think theologically about economics.

I admit a personal distaste for theorizing about economics, having been utterly bored by it at school. But it is an important moral topic for Christians. Money, Sex and Power are three forces driving humans; the church seems to be focussed only on Sex. But Money and Power are equally damaging to people when abused.

Quest for Meaning

2005-08-27T11:48:00.000+12:00

Lately I have felt haunted by the words of something I read, that unfortunately I have lost. Thomas Merton expressed a similar sentiment:

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, pursuing his meditations on the psychology of attachment and illusion, vision abd detachment, which constitute his commentary on Ecclesiastes, observes how much time weaves about us this web of illusion. It is not enough to say that the man who is attached to this world has bound himself to it, by a wrong choice. No: he spins a whole net of falsities around his spirit by the repeated consecration of his whole self to values that do not exist. He exhausts himself in the pursuit of mirages that ever fade and are renewed as fast as they have faded, drawing him further and further into the wilderness where he must die of thirst ...

And so, that "utter meaninglessness" which so exercised the ancient preacher of Ecclesiastes and his commentator is a life not merely of deluded thoughts and aspirations, but above all a life of ceaseless and sterile activity. What is more, in such a life the measure of illusion is the very intensity of the activity itself. The less you have, the more you do. The final delusion is movement, change, and variety for their own sakes alone.

What a stark contrast to the philosophy promoted in "Who moved my Cheese", a book much-loved in the corporate world. An insightful article at Mere Comments, "Have the Earthlings Gone Mad?", notes numerous ways in which industrial humans have lost their way:

I think an intelligent being from another planet, studying our habits, our young, our work, our lives might conclude that someone must be doing something to these people, cleverly, one incremental, sinister step at a time, to make them behave these very unnatural ways.

Describing the hope of Christians, Fyodor Dostoyevsky penned a wondrous, childlike perspective:

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life -- and over all the divine truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new, infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.

Job 42:5-6 seems apposite:

5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes."

This is the promise of the Kingdom, and the new covenant (1 Corinthians 13):

11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The secret treasure of the Christian faith is that the world bears the fingerprints of a loving Creator. In seeking ultimate answers, we have the great comfort of knowing that the supreme Being transcending the universe, is the embodiment of Love. And so it is natural to worship and adore our kind and tender Shepherd.

Except ye become as little children

2005-08-27T11:08:00.000+12:00

Jesus admonished his followers: (Matthew 18:2-6)

2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. 6But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Jesus was talking about having a childlike heart. Our prevailing dumbed-down mass-consumption culture promotes an infantile mind:

The child, precisely because he does not know things, is somehow set apart from us who know them all too well; and to be set apart is, in the ancient use of the word, to be sanctified, untouchable. Now suppose those who would tempt the child cannot see his separateness, not because they are all monsters, but because they themselves are childish? Take a look at the puerility of our newspapers, with their "lifebeat" or "lifestyle" sections predicated on a regression to immediate and easy gratification, to Gerber peaches for the mind. Or the infantile commercials hawking underpants, as if grown men and women all had the minds of giggly-sniggery eight year olds preoccupied with the outhouse. Or our political debate, carried on (except on a few websites, in a few books, and within the editorial pages of at most three newspapers) at a level hardly above gibberish. Or our films, that can no longer portray love between man and woman, but sometimes take a blind stab at it anyway, just as children might do who think they can guess what feelings grownups ought to have.

We are childish: men who grow as vain of their physiques as debutantes, women who stick in the neutral of tomboyism, old folks who clamor for their own citrus-colored nursery provided by young workers . . . We are too childish to see what children are. If we do see a glimpse of it, we deny it, we seek to ruin it, we want it to "mature," that is to say to rot in our sin. To grow up, for a sinner and Christian, is to grow toward the Eternal Child, and that is why God provides us so much time to do it.

Quoted from: Mere Comments

blogmotivation = 0.01

2005-08-19T17:12:00.000+12:00

I've been lacking motivation to blog lately. Bizarre, because there is plenty to blog about, with the election just around the corner, and specious Green party attempts to criminalize smacking.

Actual reality has claimed me! This virtual stuff can be too much of a distraction.

The Onion's Guide to Actual Reality

I will be reading and commenting all my favourite blogs - especially the NZ Christian blogs (links on the sidebar). I have plans for this thing, BIG plans, so dont go away!

d;o)

UPDATE: New template! Yay!

North Island logs off the Matrix

2005-06-20T14:58:00.000+12:00

According to the Herald, half the telecommunications in the North Island are suffering major outages;

Telecom fault paralyses communications in North Island
20.06.05 13.00pm UPDATE
Two separate cable faults have paralysed Telecom's broadband internet and mobile networks in the North Island, overloading landlines for much of the country.

The outage, which occurred at 10.48am, also crashed the New Zealand Stock Exchange - the sixth time that technical problems have caused the closure of the stock market in the past nine months.
...
Telecom's own call centres were being overwhelmed by calls.
...
There was no indication when the problem would be repaired, [Telecom's spokeswoman] said.

So that's why BlogNZ.com is off-line, and thus NZPundit and KiwiBlog also! Mondayitis to the extreme.

Secularism = freedom FROM religion?

2005-06-19T18:32:00.000+12:00

Despite their fervent claims otherwise, the graduates of our emphatically atheistic, secular higher education, think that the concept of 'secular state' or 'secular education' mean that any claim to absolute truth is a priori inadmissible. Suffice to say then, that religious instruction, particularly Bible studies from an unashamedly Christian perspective, are not a valid part of the official school curriculum.

Sure, I can understand that, say all the Christians. But at least there will still be Bible clubs allowed at lunchtime? Apparently not. The latest hysteria from the liberal media implies a creeping theocracy infiltrating primary schools, threatening to poison young minds with such subversive ideas as: God's blessing upon Israel, Christmas and Peace on Earth, or Easter and the promise of eternal life.

I know that the Boomer generation suffered from the ugly manifestation of Church power over daily life and official morality. Their reaction to it is understandable. However despite its failings, church splits, and authoritarian nuns, the core of the Christian faith remains true. Its blessing of Western culture is scarcely comprehended by those who live in the comfortable security of a nation where Christian principles still inform people's consciences. But the further we turn from God's ways, the more damage is wrought upon the character of the citizenry, and the hopes of future generations.

This little rant was inspired by discussions at Agri-Christian, FrogBlog, and DPF's KiwiBlog.

I also highly recommend this education article at Sir Humphrey's.

Suppressing the Truth

2005-06-19T16:24:00.000+12:00

Eating Media Lunch, by incorrigible "bad boy" Newsboy (Jeremy Wells), is the most blatant, shameless attack on Christian values that I have seen in the NZ news media. Last week his piece on "Political Correctness" was a withering, sarcastic (and strangely entertaining) attack on any and all opponents to the march of the new morality. This week he focused his scornful mockery on Destiny Church and Brian Tamaki.

I am certainly not the biggest fan of Mr. (Bishop?) Tamaki, but Newsboy's attacks on his church and the everyday folk at their latest Queen St. march were simple mockery and an attempt to humiliate people on national television. Newsboy's style of surprise attacks on unsuspecting marchers was unfair and unbalanced. He certainly exposed the fact that Newsboy is more intelligent than the average Destiny church marcher, most of whom could not provide witty rejoinders to his offensive remarks. But informative TV? Nope. Balanced debate? Nope. An original, constructive use of TVNZ (and taxpayer) resources? Nope.

I fail to see anything useful in TVNZ's airing of Newsboy and his uni-student level sarcasm, his deeply cynical and arrogant attitude, and his loutish antics (not to mention, his disheveled-looking Parnell haircut). If he is the future of young intellectuals, new media and debate in New Zealand, then television has plumbed new depths of misinformation. I thought that all the funky technologies of modern times were intended to make our lives better and to bring us into the golden age. But the quality of a society is much more than its material wealth, it's mainly the character of its citizens. Mr. Newsboy Wells reflects an unpleasant trend: despairing existentialism, hedonism driven by hopeless atheism, and a flinty determination to oppose God and any who claim to serve Him.

ChristianityToday recently featured two articles germane to this trend of arrogant atheists:

Victorian Skeptics on the Road to Damascus

Former atheist Antony Flew's admission of the existence of God shocked believers and skeptics alike, but such a turnaround is far from unique. In the 19th century, many leading intellectuals who had once lost their faith ended up reconverting.

The existing scholarship repeats endlessly a narrative of the "Victorian crisis of faith" and "loss of faith." Such an account is populated with figures who were devout Christians in their youth, but whose reading and intellectual honesty forced them to admit that Christianity was no longer credible. Leslie Stephen is an oft-cited example. Although he had received Anglican ordination, Stephen eventually concluded that Christianity had been disproved by modern learning and lost his faith. The move from ... resolute evangelicalism ... [to atheism], is often portrayed as the inevitable by-product of the advance of human knowledge.

There is a whole alternative set of life stories that do not get told, however, which show earnest skeptics and atheists eventually being overwhelmed by the intellectual cogency of Christian orthodoxy. Ironically, many of these people continue to be well known in Victorian studies as typifying the "crisis" and "loss of faith" by their skepticism, while scholars quietly ignore their later conversions as aberrations that signify nothing.

Dostoyevsky's Disregarded Prophecy

The famous Russian author shows us what's to fear in a world without God.

The dogma of progress may never recover from the 20th century. Entire continents razed by war, whole peoples wiped from Earth, generations decimated for no good reason—such an optimistic view of human capacity didn't have a chance. What could possibly cause such catastrophic anguish? How could we fail to adapt, evolve, or learn from our earlier mistakes?

Before the killing started, Europe's brightest intellectuals gathered in fashionable salons to debate Marxism, eugenics, and utopia—ideas that would unleash this destruction. Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky chaired many such meetings during the mid-19th century. By the time he completed The Brothers Karamazov in 1879, Dostoyevsky had established himself as a foremost opponent of secularism and revolutionary Marxism.
...
The theory had gained wide hearing in Dostoyevsky's day. Friedrich Nietzsche further legitimized the idea of a "superman" unrestrained by Christian values. A superman refuses "antiquated" notions of right and wrong, recognizing only those values that help him get ahead.

Even if you don't recognize these theories, you recognize their effect. Dostoyevsky's beloved Russia eventually succumbed to revolutionary fervor in 1917, and "supermen" Lenin and Stalin justified their murderous barbarism by appealing to visions of communist utopia. Competing forms of superman ideology clashed during World War II, pitting Hitler's genocidal eugenics against Soviet aspirations. Today Osama bin Laden, while not secular, excuses his murder of innocents by claiming a superior morality.

Hope to Overcome
Dostoyevsky's great contribution to Christianity is that he shows us how to combat the destructive theories he so effectively explains. Christians must undermine the attractiveness of such ideas by bringing rebellious humans into a loving relationship with Christ. Sonia, a young woman forced into prostitution to support her step-siblings, models for Dostoyevsky how God uses unlikely vessels to communicate his truth. She accepts Raskolnikov's confession and forgives him, despite her friendship with one of his victims. She further coaxes him to realize his idea's failings and spurs him toward repentance with her unconditional love.

There is obviously a clash of cultures underway, a sea change of cultural norms. The challenge to the church in New Zealand is to respond in a way that honours Jesus Christ. Not attempting to impose pharasaical legalism on the nation, but to serve the people, following Christ's example. This is not to excuse sin, but to redeem the sinful. (We Christians are certainly numbered among them, I have been one of the worst).

UPDATE: I have just responded to DPF's post 'Barking Mad', where he struggles to comprehend Tamaki's explosive rhetoric. I believe that Tamaki has some of the truth, but his general worldview is unbalanced and unhealthy. My response was thus:

Jesus Christ came to serve and redeem sinners. Not to impose law. That was why he opposed the Pharisees so vigorously. The mission of the Church should never have been to rule - that was its major error in the time of Constantine.

Certainly we are to speak the truth, but only as a part of the great commission : to know God and make him known.

Changing New Zealand into a Christian nation cannot happen by enforcing rules from above: it can only occur by a grassroots change in the hearts and minds of each individual Kiwi.

I would like it if people were all nice and kind and lived good lives etc. But people were not built to live in a little box, like obedient automatons. This world with all its messy failures and glorious freedoms is a place where humans have free will - given by God - to make their own choices, for good or ill.

I would like people to choose good, but you can't force them to. Even God allows fallen, sinful humans to continue in evil for a time. We live in a time of grace. Judgement will come all too quickly: Christians are not called to pass judgement on their fellow man, this is God's jurisdiction.

Jesus said: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's; give to God what is God's". I don't recall him saying "overthrow Caesar".

Regarding the general tone of disbelief and atheism in this thread, maybe this will give you pause for thought. See also this post about "Legislating Morality".

I would also add, the Christian faith is relational, spiritual, and redemptive. Not legalistic, power-seeking, or greedy. The secular culture idolises money, sex, and power; the Christian counterculture ought to reflect the ancient virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility.

Labour: a self-serving political elite

2005-06-18T22:39:00.000+12:00

Recently unearthed from today's random googling: an 'autopsy of NZ social democracy' in a Marxist mailing list!!
(quotes):

The proposition that the NZ Labour Party, originally founded by working class rebels in a remote past, is still social democratic today, belongs strictly to the realm of religious delirium.
If you screw workers and beneficiaries by cutting their incomes, putting them out of jobs, and selling off state assets, you may of course generate some extra cash in the account, but this is not a material basis of a social democracy. It is a material basis for a self-serving political elite and its hangers-on, who have some spare cash to pay consultants to come up with some ideas about how to keep the society together.
If you are a socialist in New Zealand, you might as well say you are a socialist and declare yourself for the uncompromising defence of workers and the poor. If not, the only other thing you can be is either a groovy populist club of nice people with some feminists, some Maoris, some poor people and superannuitants needing some heartfelt sympathy, or else a loony.
supposing - stretching the imagination - that you would get at some future date a social democratic government in New Zealand again with a project for national salvation, like in the 1930s. What would it look like, and what could they do? The New Zealand economy is more integrated in the world economy than its was ever before, and more dependent on foreign investment than before, a virtual playground of the multinationals.
Any would-be social democratic government worthy of the name would immediately provoke massive capital flight, and would be forced to revolutionary methods, large-scale nationalisations and so on.

(end quote)

Labour is walking a fine line. NZ is beholden to international capital, so restricting the truly socialist agenda they long to implement. Therefore Labour like to make a big hoo-ha over their reform of social morals, under the guise of 'compassion'.. but that's a subject for another article.

Beatitudes for the 21st Century

2005-06-18T22:30:00.000+12:00

by Huw Luscombe : Cairns, Australia

Blessed are the poor in body fat
      For theirs is the world of fashion
Blessed are those who sell
      For their friends will all become clients
Blessed are the tolerant
      For they shall inherit mediocrity
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the environment
      For they shall be patronised
Blessed are open-minded
      For they may well know what might have been
Blessed are the politically correct
      For they shall see the equality of death.
Blessed are the Humanitarian Activists
      For they shall be the children of media manipulation
Blessed are those who can publicise their persecution and show how others have violated their Human Rights
      For theirs is the promise of government funding.

The god I don't believe in

2005-06-18T22:22:00.000+12:00

A god who loves pain, and makes himself feared,
a god who catches man by surprise in a sin of weakness,
a god who condemns material things,
    and plays at condemning people,
a god who flashes a red light against human joys,
a god who demands that if a man is to believe,      he must give up being a man,
a god who does not allow people to talk familiarly to him,
a god who sterilizes a person's reason,
a god who reveals himself only to the mature,
     the wealthy, or wise

An ascetic, abstract god conceived by professional theologians,
a god of those people who have stock answers for everything,
a god in whom there are no mysteries,
     who is not greater than we are,
a god who says and feels nothing about
     the ongoing problems of humanity,
a god who does not have a different personal word
     for each person,
a god who could not have become human,
     with all that that implies,
a god who does not captivate men's hearts

I do not believe in such a god: my god is the other God.
Credit: Juan Arias, John Powell. Personal customisations added.

The Open and Closed Mind

2005-06-18T21:41:00.000+12:00

This book is 'An investigation into the nature of belief systems and personality systems' by Milton Rokeach. He offers a comparison of open- vs. closed- minded belief systems :

Characteristics of an Open-Minded Belief System:

Do not strongly reject disbeliefs
Do not sharply divide belief and disbelief systems
Do not lump together varieties of disbelief systems
Are more likely to view the world as a generally friendly place
Do not structure their world around the views of a particular authority figure
Operate from a relatively non-restrictive sense of time and space

Characteristics of a Close-Minded Belief System:

Strong rejection of alternative beliefs (=“disbeliefs”)
Draw a sharp line between beliefs and disbeliefs (and expect others to do likewise)
Tend to lump together all varieties of disbeliefs into one rejected category
Feel the need to fight to protect their space; time sense permeated by anxiety
Tend to view the world as a hostile place
Often structure beliefs around the views of a highly trusted authority figure

I tend to think that these categorizations are a little unsympathetic, although they do offer an insight into the mentality of cults. Relabelling the categories, you could call the systems 'Clear- vs. Woolly- Minded'.

TCP/IP: Traditional Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol

2005-06-18T20:36:00.000+12:00

Slashdot : Carrier Pigeons' Bandwidth Quantified
"A well documented test took place in the north of Israel, in presence of several dozen Internet geeks and experts. During the test, 3 homing pigeons carried 4 GB (gigabytes) for 100 km distance, achieving, what apparently looks as pigeons' world record in data transfer to a given distance. Bandwidth achieved by the pigeons was 2.27 Mbps...Transferring a similar volume of information through a common uplink of ADSL line would have taken no less than 96 hours..."
Original technical specs are here and here.

Typically, Google is ahead of the game and already uses a similiar technology for optimising its search results. This is just the latest in a string of incredible innovations from the Googlemeisters.

Labour Party declaration of loyalty

2005-06-18T20:24:00.000+12:00

I, for one, welcome our meddling, nanny-statist, hoplophobic Overlords, and I'd like to remind them, that as a trusted internet personality, I can be useful in rounding up slaves to toil in their "non-confrontational" reeducation camps, where they are taught the wisdom of appeasement and socialism.

(Oh, wait, that's public school!) -- from a freewillblog article : "This is the kind of thing that would normally only happen on The Simpsons"

The old Jihad

2005-06-18T20:21:00.000+12:00

Here's a parody of Cat Stevens' song 'Do you remember the days of the old schoolyard' (by my friend James):

Do you remember the days of the old Jihad
When we used to kill a lot
Don't you remember the days of the old Jihad
we used to kill a lot

When we, slaughtered infidels
and we, sent them all to hell
and we laughed, and needed blood
woo-ooo I dismembered you

(lead break, automatic weapons fire...)

Handy distractions

2005-06-18T20:15:00.000+12:00

Since I am in 'work-avoidance' mode today, here's some links to some total Net classics (geek factor 10)
The Register: Could Bill Gates write code?
Reverse Engineering of Altair Basic
The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer
The World's most popular OS? Not Windows, but TRON
Ed, man! !man ed (the editor for l33t d00dz)
Captain Ledford: Coolest K5 Diary Ever
The Vortex of Kibology (a true net.legend)
These sites are just as great for avoiding work as they ever were, when I was a net n00b in the Auckland Uni Maths Lab, in the nineties :)

Graham Henry: lion tamer

2005-06-18T20:11:00.000+12:00

I am not so convinced that Graham Henry will be any better than Mitchell and I think he may even be worse as a coach although more successful as a media handler. IF he wins the world cup I shall have to study at the feet of my accomplished master. But I don't know if his strategy will be any better than Mitchells.

What really ticks me off is that not one all black coach that I have seen has yet to work out a strategy for dealing with those teams that can score from you all over the park. I.E. France in its good day and Aussie at the world cup semifinal where they kicked our ass. The answer is simple and will give us a better than even chance of dealing to these teams.

1. Don't give them possession by kicking for touch.
2. Don't give them possession by kicking down field
3. Don't give them possession by putting the grubber through
and ....

4. DON'T FREAKIN GIVE THEM POSSESSION!!!!!

Instead

Run the ball at them
Pick and run from Rucks
Maul it back at them
Fancy dance it back at them

Hold onto the damn pill and stop trying to convince yourself that the other guys don't know how to run with it when they obviously do. What do you think they are going to do when they get the ball. Not even England plays like England used to in the 80's and 90's. Every team in the Big 5 (NZ, Aus, SA, Eng, Fr) can punish you for giving them the pill. Our guys can maul it with the best of them and certainly can ruck it with the best, and if we choose to keep on going forward where the chance of turnover is least i.e. running/mauling the damn thing, then we can slaughter any team under the sun. It is much more physically demanding but then again that stands for the other side too.

As Australia proved in the World Cup against us...

IF you attempt to play SAFE balanced test rugby against a team that is no longer playing by your rules then you are being tactically outsmarted. You are behaving like the General who attempts to fight the next war the way they did in the last. If this was 'Nam then our guys probably would have fragged the guy responsible for the battle plan. To put it (the loss) down to a lack of experience and leadership is to avoid the fact that excellent experienced leaders of elite forces can still get their guys killed through training to fight the last war as opposed to the next one or by refusing to learn the tactical lessons from previous battles.

Change, adapt, overcome, prepare, or else join that list of losers like General Mclelland (Union General, Bull Run, US Civil War), Vercingetorix (Gaulish Chieftain, Alesia, Gaul, Ceasars Campaigns), and Field Marshall Alexander Haig (British, Somme, France, WW1). These guys will go down in history as some of the biggest thicko's to have ever lead men. Not because they didn't have two brain cells to rub together or that their troops were crap but because they didn't know when their tactics were innappropriate and they lacked imagination.

'nuff said

The Ultimate Humanist

2005-06-17T21:55:00.000+12:00

Here's a quote from "The Reckoning", by James Huggins, pp110-114. It spoke to me of the spirit of this age, and revealed some ancient truths. In the words of character Malachi Halder:

Did you know ... that the ancient Egyptians considered the Pharaoh to be God? ... How easy it has been for men, even from primitive times, to seek immortality in themselves, ... Immortality. Power. Freedom. Strength to accomplish whatever man's will would desire.

We have traveled so short a distance in so many years. Today men stand on the shoulders of formulaic logic that leads them, without alternatives, they say, to the ultimate decision that man alone, within himself, contains the power and the secrets of Godhood. And they lean heavily upon their complicated reasoning to explain why such a decision is the only true destination of high and critical thought. But if that is true, why have profoundly primitive cultures, inhabiting vanished civilations long lost to the Earth, forever held this same conviction? Why? I will tell you why. Because fearful man is destined forever to approach the void, to move towards that verge which separates the known from the unknown. It is the human tendency, as Kant explained. Yet man, because he is inherently selfish and self-serving above all things, will travel no road without the full measure of what he might possess. In his self-centred dominion, man will surrender nothing that must not absolutely be surrendered. So he is faced with the dilemma of entering the next world without losing what he has gained in this one. A difficult thing, to be sure.

A powerful temptation, if primitive. The Pharaoh was considered to be God because of his soul's divine union to the sun. He was considered more than mere man, and more than Nature. He was the ultimate Sun-Man, or Man-God, in the most natural sense. He was one with the Cosmos, holding the keys to life by the power of his will and by the power of the sun. For his very will was his life, both for the here and the hereafter. Seemingly, it was the ultimate escape from death and from moral limitations.

You see, evil did not exist, at least not for the Man-God who found his freedom in the vast and infinite universe. For nature itself was neutral to good and evil. The only moral limitations that might be imposed on the Man-God were the limitations of his own, divine will. An evil could be defined as that power that prevented him from exercising that free moral will. The end purpose of his existence became, therefore, the power to create that thing that was the object of his desire.

But at the emergence of the Hebrew God, the Man-God was confronted by his ultimate nemesis. An enemy that perfectly defied his deific claim. So Yahweh, the Ancient of Days, became the scorned and rejected scourge of the world, despised as an enemy of the ultimate free man. The ageless collision of forces. Man and God. And men who would not kneel accused the God of Israel of being the waste product of a condemning moral code propagated by foolish men who must create an imaginary God that is beyond themselves. And Yahweh was condemned in the old world as the foolish false creation of weak men who were simply unable to survive or rule by the power of the Cosmos and by their own hand. A confilct of decision, of decided faith or non-faith. And it was on this ground of the unknowable that the battle first began.

I call it unknowable because this ground is ultimately the dominion of faith, ... where nothing can be understood empirically, and a man must decide, for himself alone, to believe as he would believe. I am old now, and have forgotten much of what I knew. But I still understand the limitations of empirical thought. I recall all the questions of fundamental certainty that evaded the critical reason of Descates, Augustine, Hegel, Pascal, and Kant. So I do not claim to completely understand ultimate truth, nor do I stand alone in my ignorance of it. I know that I can defend my faith as far as reason may ascend, in any discipline of thought, be it philosophy or theology or science or archaelogy. And I am certain that I hold a perfectly and ultimately reasonable faith. But, in the final plain of human reason, faith is faith, and knowledge is knowledge. God always has been, and always shall remain, the ultimate mystery. Always there will be fundamental questions of uncertainty that only faith may bridge. And it is because of what I know of these fundamental questions, and faith itself, that I say with confidence that reason will never fully close the void between the known and the unknowable. Faith, alone is the final step.

It's true, you know, that the secret things belong to God. And yet those who worship the Man-god, or this Sun-Man of the Cosmos, have since time immemorial, fought with red swords of hate to destroy the restricting moral influence of men who would live by the words of Yahweh. And this is because the Man-God, from the very beginning, has regarded Yahweh's very existence as a hated and mortal threat to his moral autonomy. And for certain, the very idea of an omnipotent and holy God is an attack upon the grounds of what he holds most dear: Himself.

It is nothing unique to the history of man. One side elects to believe that the Cosmos, or Nature, or the Superior Man himself, holds the keys of eternal life. They believe that man himself should be the ultimate measure of Good and Evil. While we believe that a holy an righteaous God has given man the commandment that we must worship Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and spirit, abide by this Law, and claim no moral sovereignty for ourselves. One side claims that they themselves are God as Man, the ultimate expression of what is good and right and true. The other side simply chooses to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, who proclaim that we must worship no other God before Him.

The dream of the God-Man is to decide his own moral dominion, and by the freedom he claims, extend that moral dominion over the Earth. It is a perversion of a solemn truth, for man was indeed created to have dominion over the Earth. but not by the might of his own hand. No, and not by the power of the sword, nor the strength of the flames. No, it was by the mercy of God tha man was born to subdue the Earth, remaining within the justice that God ordained.

And it was against this dark dream of mortal cosmic dominion that Simon died resisting. Bcause he knew what the end of that dream would be. He remembered what oppression was wrought in the holocaust of ancient empires who held the God-Man as a supreme being. He remembered the dynasties of Mesopotamia which worshipped the gods of the Earth; evil monarchies that forced the predatory will of the strongest upon the weak. For always the strongest rule where there is no dominion higher than man himself.

We should learn from history; it reveals former things. In ancient worlds there were many religions that held man himself to be the all-embracing Absolute of good and evil, the decider of his own destiny by the strength of his arm. They rejected the concept of the an invisible, omnipotent God who created man and then revealed Himself to man, a God who esablished codes of conduct that could not be altered in the fleshly domain. And, even as it is now, it was a time of decision. A time to decide by an acot of will to serve the God-Man or serve the Hebrew God that alone breathed life into dust to make flesh, and still retained the right to decide life or death for that flesh.

Measure a god by the sacrifice he seeks. Measure a man by the prey he selects. Is it revealing that ancient empires who worshipped the free moral mind of a master race always selected their sacrifices among the weak, the defenceless, or the poor? Is it a coincidence that all the past dynasties ruled by the God-Man, or Sun-Man, mortared their altars with the same blood? And it's true, you know.

From the Druids to the Massalians to the keepers of demonic Baal to Dagon to the priests of the Aztec's Xipe Topec, the Sun-God, it was always the children and the weakest who were selected for death. Always the weakest. Never the strong, no. And why is that? I'll tell you why. It's because man without an omnipotent God to restrict his actions will forever serve the beast that lives so strongly within, becoming a predator over a fallen world. And, as nature demands, the strongest men become the strongest predators. And as any predator, men will select easy prey before strong. And children are always among the weakest, the most defenceless.

Yes, ... predation is the final plateau of the God-Man concept. Not love, and not mercy; it only recognizes strength. The strong rule, and the strongest rule completely. And it is this cruel fate that has always been the end of those who find their god in Nature, or in themselves, or in the Cosmos or the Sun. Man as God. nature as God. The Sun-Man. They cunningly devise whatever ideology that will allow them to justify their moral autonomy and their predatory lusts. a thousand faces for the same being. A thousand names to personify a god who is exactly what they want him to be. And they violently reject the unyielding moral code imposed upon man by Yahweh, a God who has always enforced a code of justice that would defend the weak, and punish the cruel.

Where the New Zealand Experiment went wrong

2005-05-25T18:43:00.000+12:00

This excellent piece by SubversNZ, mentions the recently imposed, and frankly disgusting debt burden on students, and critiques the left/right dichotomy. He attempts to chart a "Christian" (I would label it "charitable") approach to economics. It reminded me of this book: Taking New Zealand Seriously: The Economics of Decency (Auckland: HarperCollins, 1998); by Tim Hazeldine.

Hazeldine clearly explains the loss of good will and community experienced in New Zealand society since the reforms of 1984 through the 1990's. He cares about NZ, and is not beholden to left/right labels.
Reference: http://physed.otago.ac.nz/sosol/v6i2/v6i2_2.html

==============================================
The Experiment

From 1984 until 1999 New Zealand was subject to a radical experiment in free market economics. An economic miracle didn’t occur. Prior to 1986, 15 to 25 year old New Zealanders were making a median income of $14,700 a year. By year 2000 the same group were making $8,100 and youth suicides were higher than in comparable countries. As well, living standards had plummeted and 70 percent of households were worse off than counterparts ten years earlier (Boshier, 2001).

Cabinet briefing papers spoke of “a sense of unease about the country’s social fabric … the fraying state of the nation’s families, children and the socially excluded” (Clark Finds New Energy, Sunday Star-Times, January 23, 2000, p. C2). ‘Efficiency’ and the ‘free market’ meant the already disadvantaged - young Maori and Pacific Islands women - were even more seriously jeopardised (Peters, Marshall & Massey, 1994).

After 1984, foreigners came to observe The New Zealand Experiment. Most were already convinced of the supremacy of Friedmanite economics. For Friedman the only thing that matters was shareholder profit. That the company might also think about its workers, community, society or planet was dismissed as quaint rubbish. Comfortable at the Hilton or Hyatt, visitors were in no position to witness the precipitous decline in literacy and numeracy rates, escalating expulsions from school, a deepening problem of Maori underachievement, confusion of demoralised and underpaid teachers, dismissal (through restructuring) of large numbers of skilled workers, 78 per cent cuts (in a single year) to adult education and emergence of an underclass. Apologists were also in no position to observe the collapse of conviviality, the belligerence of political discourse, and the consternation amongst people with lives turned upside down.

Given conditions at work and a growing divide between farmers and wage earners, trade unions took root in New Zealand and resulted in formation of the Labour Party in 1916. The depression of 1931 created hardship in households, riots, relief work and new theories about social policy and government. In 1935 the Labour Party swept to power on a landslide. It was this government that created a welfare state. By 1984 conditions for radical change were in place. How new right members of the inner cabinet and lobbyists persuaded Labour to jettison social democratic traditions and commit to total capitalism is described by Douglas and Callan (1987). Kelsey (1995) identified the anti-democratic nature of the reforms. The following were significant:

Policy changes were made with lightning speed. No time was given for reflection or discussion. As Douglas (1993) said “Implement reform by quantum leaps. Moving step by step lets vested interests mobilise. Big packages neutralizes them. Speed is essential. It is impossible to move too fast” (p.3). Critics called this a blitzkrieg and antidemocratic approach.
There was a constant stress on globalisation and TINA (‘there-is-no-alternative’). Voices which articulated alternatives were discredited or dismissed as ‘unrealistic.’
The past (particularly pre-1984) was dismissed as irrelevant – an embarrassing welfare state muddle (Boshier, in press).
Consultation was used for implementing – not changing – the thrust of reforms.
A democratically elected government in an advanced state rather than a developing country trying to curry favour with international financiers undertook large-scale and radical structural adjustments.
Pure economic theory was applied in a manner that had little regard for social (even electoral) consequences. Opponents were ‘benighted.’ They ‘didn’t get it.’ It was not a matter of ‘politics,’ just ‘reality.’
Labour, a party traditionally opposed to such policies, initiated the restructuring.

==============================================
Market rationality

After 1984, the rationality of the marketplace would prevail. It didn’t work. Instead, society “lost cohesion and continuity …. industries closed, communities withered, people moved out of employment, change has been so constant that many people are disoriented. People wander through life relating to no social group wider than the family, and often not even that” (Jesson, 1999, p. 211). Expatriate New Zealanders (like the author) noticed how, despite extraordinary accomplishments in many fields, the post 1984 neo-liberal rendering of globalisation eroded confidence.

==============================================
It’s just globalisation

A stark example of the sea change in cuultural attitudes, and the dichotomy between nouveau riche and grassroots kiwis, was during the bitter "Blackheart" and "Loyal" campaigns during the Auckland America's Cup regattas.

A centrepiece of the neo-liberal (radical right) post-1984 ‘reform’ of New Zealand society was the need to forget the collectivism of the past and embrace individually oriented entrepreneurship in the global economy. Because of the post-1984 experiment with neo-liberalism, many New Zealand citizens were sanguine about defections from Team New Zealand. Young people had grown up with lectures about wealth creation. Having lived in a ‘cult of finance’ (Jesson, 1999) they were used to the idea that ‘money talks’. Defections were an inevitable consequence of globalisation.

The rightwing Business Roundtable was untroubled by the notion of people selling New Zealand intellectual property abroad; i.e. that humans act out of self-interest and material wealth is the prime motivator. Hence, they abhorred fretting about migration losses. People must “do the best for themselves and their families” (Kerr, 2001, p. 4). “Does it matter if Brad Butterworth takes his skills and money offshore?” asked the Business Roundtable.

Defections are part of headhunting and a salient attribute of professional sports. But, in a small country with a fragile economy, where every taxi driver, farmer and student has an opinion, losing six of the world’s best sailors was a serious problem. Hence, the 2003 America’s Cup was not a ‘friendly contest between nations’ (as anticipated in the Deed of Gift). It was a regatta like no other.

==============================================

Alinghi vs. Team New Zealand: A study in contrasts
Characteristic	Alinghi	Team New Zealand
Underlying Philosophy	GLOBALISATION	LOCALISATION
Main sponsor	Swiss billionaire's personal fortune	‘Family-of-five’ N.Z. companies
Estimated Cost	$150 million	$85 million
Boat name	Postmodern signifier; Brand with no meaning	Country
Logos/branding	Postmodern swirls	N.Z. Silver Fern
Staffing	Worldwide headhunting	Mostly N.Z. nationals
Relationship to nation-state	None	Considerable
Operational foci	Individual ‘excellence’	Team building
Motivation	Money/Global Marketing	Country/Pride
Leadership Orientation	Great men	Team
Syndicate Organisation	Corporation	Whanau [Extended family]
Links to Indigenality	None	Considerable
Historical Consciousness	None	Considerable
Focus of rewards	Private interests	Public good
Meaning of ‘home’	Poorly defined	Well-defined

Revenge of George Lucas

2005-05-23T18:16:00.000+12:00

Episode III, Revenge of the Sith: Actually I really enjoyed it. I turned my brain off for a few hours and went along for the ride. However, Hayden Christiansen was dismal. The fall of Anakin was totally unconvincing, his reasons for becoming a Sith were just not believable. Maybe George Lucas could have made more of the fun aspects of being a dark jedi and being feared by trillions of life forms. The idea of crushing insolent subordinates, building doomsday weapons, and exploding disobedient planets, has a certain appeal.

As I commented at DPF's blog, It makes no sense whatever that Anakin turned to the dark side because of a few bad dreams. A better plot device would have been to make the Jedi Council kill Padme, (or appear to do so). And for a Jedi he sure acted like a retard, little better than the other 'wise' Jedi. It's hard to suspend disbelief when faced with a plot of utter stupidity.

An even better plot device would have been to have Anakin's arms pulled off by a Wookiee and his roasted corpse eaten by Jawas. Then Vader's identity could be a real plot twist: eg Jar-Jar turns to the Dark Side. Hah.

Other reviews around the Web:
Slashdot
ChristianityToday
Metcalph
Kuro5hin.

And now for some memorable quotes:
(from the movies, hat-tip to 'dim')

Darth Vader: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Han Solo: Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh? You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.
Princess Leia: That doesn't sound too hard.

Obi-Wan: Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Darth Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.

from the DarthSide blog:

Vader: "Whose trachea do you have to crush with your mind to get a little service around here?"

Palpatine: "Chin up, Lord Vader," my master continued. "The Empire will strike back, and that pitiful pocket of anarchists will be stamped out forever."
Vader: "But master, in my son they may have a new hope for the return of the Jedi."

Admiral Piett: "Have you tried one of these Ewoks, m'lord?" he asked, offering me a crisp kebab. "Delectable!"

Boba Fett: "Well, I'm off to the wop-wops," said Boba Fett genially as he stood beside me in the carbon freeze chamber. He was looking forward to his reward from the Hutts. "Crash hot kai they have on Tatooine," he said with relish. I had no idea what he was talking about so I just nodded.

Good on ya Boba mate.

Nothing beats being Free

2005-05-09T17:26:00.000+12:00

Vodafone recently took a full-page ad in the Christchurch Press, entitled "Nothing beats being Free", and featuring two rotund, pink, naked people. Unfortunately the black ink (deliberately?) failed to properly obscure certain portions of anatomy! So, here's an ode to their marketing department. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Vodafone!)

"nothing beats being free"

this ad really baffles me
vodafone markets nudity?
& saving whales, like free willy?!
shut up hippy, go hug a tree

imagine sailing on the sea
i'm in the drink, it was leaky
free willy is chewing parts of me
sometimes undies are not silly!

"nothing beats being free"
except running thru matagouri
may cause pain & injury
and a trip to the A & E

"nothing beats being free"
but on electric fence, do not pee
unless you like agony
and your taste runs to B & D

you need to learn your ABC
to get the taste for E or P
then you can fulfil your fantasy
when anguish seems like ecstasy

its not my thing, personally
vodafone has no morality
drug-addled nudists are not happy
because their freedom is anarchy

beware writing poems, employee
of a faceless corporate entity
or you'll get outplacement opportunity
"nothing beats being free"

Cracks appearing in MSM hegemony

2005-04-05T00:00:00.000+12:00

Around the local blogosphere at the moment, several writers note the shortcomings of our all powerful popular media. Three Point Turn applauds John Tamihere's "honesty" in saying:

(The Parliamentary press gallery are) utterly and totally useless. And sycophantic. You know and I know there's no investigative journalism done in that bloody gallery. In the information age, we've got more ignorant people out there than there's ever been.

The unstable, acerbic contributors to DogBitingMen are pimping their votes to any politician who will ban various things, such as:

use of the term 'MSM'; Wanganui & Michael Laws; and bloggers thinking they are media (comparing bloggers to the gossipy old woman in the staff lunch room, who reaches as many people as half the bloggers in New Zealand).

David Farrar's monthly blog stats roundup tells a different story, with an incredible amount of material produced in March (The total number of posts on NZ political blogs was 1,622 in March with 7,549 comments made). And last month DPF had a record 83,346 unique visits! Hardly the statistics of irrelevant gossip.

This blog features in DPF's stats for the first time! w00t! And prolific newcomer, Home Throne & Altar has shot into the "Heavy blogging" stats. (Not that I am jealous or anything :o/ ).

And closing the theme of media critiques, there are a few people keeping their eyes/ears peeled at RadioNZBias, Reinventing TVNZ, and MediaNZ. And how could I forget Propaganda News Network?

Destiny Church distortions

2005-04-04T19:15:00.000+12:00

A post by DPF provoked me to some thought on the Destiny church. While the church undoubtedly provides *some* service to the community, this is outweighed by their unfortunate focus on legalism instead of the love, grace, and life found in Jesus.

I have belonged to a couple of churches in the fundamentalist mold, not quite as outspoken as Destiny, and it was quite damaging to my relationship to God and fellow humans. I remain a Christian, and intellectually I agree with most of Brian Tamaki's pronouncements.

*However*, I do take issue with his methods. It is not constructive to stand on the sidelines of society and throw rocks. Nor is it helpful to impose pharasaical legalism on the members of the church, for they are like sheep in need of a gentle shepherd.

Tamaki spends a lot of time waving his Bible around saying stuff like "this Word is the absolute standard", "if you disagree with this Word, then you are WRONG"; "if you disobey this word, that is EVIL".

Only problem is, his exposition of the Bible is unbalanced. I believe it would be more accurate for him to say "if you disagree with Brian Tamaki, then you are WRONG".

Some quotes:
Hosea: "What does lord ask of you, O man? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God"
Corinthians (I think): "Build each other up in your most holy faith, encourage each other"
Ephesians: "Be ye kind, one to another, forgiving each other, even as in Christ God has forgiven you"

Matthew 5 contains Jesus' principles of a good life (Sermon on the Mount): "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

In fact, I recommend this exposition of 2 Peter, particularly noting:
"Don't twist the scriptures to your own destruction. The scriptures can be a source of much good, but they can also be abused to much harm."

This Profile of Spiritual Abuse really hits the nail on the head.

Also, God does not want Christians to throw away their critical faculties, why else do we have a brain? Acts 17:11 "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

Finally,
Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall." (Particularly relevant to Graham Capill)

Yes Jesus was an outspoken prophet of his day.
But that's pretty much where the similarities between Jesus Christ and Pastor Brian end.

Abortion is out of control

2005-03-31T20:41:00.000+12:00

From 1980 to 2002, over 255,000 NZ babies were sacrificed to the gods of money, selfishness, and sexual anarchy. It looks to be tracking at around 24% now - that is, for every 1000 live births there are 240 terminations. From Demographic Trends 2003 at the Department of Statistics,

Abortion ratios (abortions per 1,000 live births plus abortions) provide an alternative measure for international comparison. The latest abortion ratio for New Zealand (240) is above that for Japan (217), and is lower than those for England and Wales (229), Canada (245), the United States (254), Sweden (258) and Australia (264).

In 1965, the birth rate was higher than it is now, yet the abortion rate was 0.1%.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-newzealand.html

Abortion is a risky medical procedure, and it is irresponsible of the NZ Abortion "Supervisory" Committee to continue to allow the open slather to continue.

Moloch must be pleased.

(originally posted at my old blog)

UPDATE: Dept of Stats links might be broken, I'll have to look around for the data (again).

UPDATE #2: Check this out! The Baby Who Survived Three Abortions

UPDATE #3: fixed Stats link. See also Voice for Life NZ, Ballad of the Unborn.

Incarnational reality

2005-03-31T19:35:00.000+12:00

Steve the e-mergent kiwi, wrote a tantalising article mentioning his work on Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, a sequel to the book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross
Cool, that book is going on my Amazon wishlist. I am very interested in the holistic view of atonement, and incarnational theology. Leeanne Payne wrote a great book 'Real Presence' which I need to buy (again). David Moore, the vicar at St Lukes on Manchester St, has also spoken of this. I usually attend an evangelical, charismatic church (which I love dearly), but something about the Eucharist at St Lukes really moves me. I like my faith a little fuzzy around the edges! :o) [I also like to be opinionated]

Particuarly interesting is the claim that the Crucifixion was more than atonement for sin; it is some kind of redemption of all Creation from its fallen state..?! This is supported elsewhere in Scripture but not explored very often in my church, possibly because of its hippie tree-hugger overtones! Since the Resurrection, the world exists in a state of anticipation, a sort of 'already here, but not yet' realization of the full Presence of God on earth.

However I do have a problem with some churches that try to expand this theology into a central doctrine, putting aside the urgent missions of evangelism and ministry to the suffering.

UPDATE: since this entry is copied from my old site, comments are found below:

steve wrote:
glad you found my blog entry "tantalising" - i preached on hoiho penguins and Jesus last week; can send you a copy of that if you want ... email me ...

Gnosticism at RZIM?

2005-03-30T17:44:00.000+12:00

A National Geographic article "Beyond the Brain", written from the publication's typical naturalist perspective, prompted a response from one of Ravi's fellow apologists ("More than a Brain"). While a critique of this article is entirely warranted, Dale Fincher at A Slice of Infinity, went too far when he claimed:

Corina is more beautiful than her brain, for Corina is more than her brain. It is in her brain that much activity happens. But she is not located there. She is a soul who uses her brain to navigate the world that God has made.

Unfortunately he didn't make clear the holistic Christian perspective that body, soul, and spirit are intertwined : your body is as much as part of you as your soul. When someone looks at you they may say (impolitely): "You are fat". Do they refer to the soul? of course not. A commonly held Christian view of the human person is:

Body - physical realm, created to do good works on Earth
Soul - seat of mind, will, and emotions: for cognitive processes, decisions, feelings
Spirit - the spark of life within, the core id, communicates with God in the spiritual realm. The deepest identity, from which emanates love and true fellowship with others and worship of God.

When you pray, all of your being ought to be involved. Ideally interaction with Heaven is not an merely an esoteric spiritual event, but perhaps your body would kneel, your soul would feel at peace, and you spirit would worship the Lord.

Purpose-Driven Life

2005-03-17T20:10:00.000+13:00

From Jill Carattini at RZIM:
[Hat-tip: philbaker.net - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! ;o)]

Once asking his mother for a definition of sin, John Wesley received a response fit for theology books. "Take this rule," Susanna Wesley wrote to John. "Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."(1)

In a world that vehemently rejects the depravity of humankind, and much less desires a definition for a word deemed prehistoric and intolerant, what can we glean from her careful words? I believe we can glean much, though the thought I suggest is simple.

Among the notions of the business world runs a common thread of thought: no successful corporate entity exists for long without a mission statement. Any business that seeks to organize itself always determines a final goal by which all distractions are judged and removed. In a sense, Mrs. Wesley defined sin as anything that distracts you from your ultimate mission in life. In our attention-deficit disordered culture, distractions abound. But you will never understand what a distraction is until you clearly enunciate your final goal. Have you defined that goal for your life?

When Boris Becker was interviewed after his second Wimbledon victory, he was asked a simple question. Noting the tennis pro had overcome much to achieve a goal many can only dream of accomplishing, the reporter asked, "What is your greatest challenge in life?" Becker answered quickly. His greatest challenge, he said, was to keep from committing suicide.

In his words is a careful warning. We must choose our goals carefully. If when we accomplish our goals, we find our lives still lacking, it may have been a worthy goal, but it was not a goal worthy of defining our life's purpose. It was not meant to be our final goal.

When a news reporter asked another one of our athletic heroes why he chose to become a Christian, Deion Sanders spoke about the night his team won the Super Bowl. It was after all of the interviews and victory photos had been taken. He had just finished ordering a new car. And as he sat there, he suddenly realized that every goal he had ever attempted had now been reached. The mere thought of this made him uneasy. The empty and dejected part of him would never be filled with fame or accomplishments. Turning to Christ, he cried for wholeness.

In a hymn written after the death of a friend, John Wesley sings of a life unobscured by lesser goals than this.

Servant of God, well done!
Thy glorious warfare's past;
The battle's fought, the race is won,
And thou art crowned at last.

When your mission statement in life is a relationship with God, you will find there is no greater purpose, nothing that gives your life more significance. Then to his glory you will say of your goals: "I can accomplish all things through Christ who strengthens me."

(1) Letters of Susanna Wesley, June 8, 1725.

Science and Christianity Showcase

2005-03-17T18:16:00.000+13:00

I am greatly annoyed that most charismatic-type churches are happy to deny some obvious truths of science, claiming some kind of conspiracy, and giving their adherents a feeling that they alone possess the "secret knowledge". Hence the persistent stereotype of Christians ignorant of science, preferring some kind of blind faith, is easily justified.

Enter Catez Stevens, blogger of AllThings2All (recently discovered, and much admired). She has compiled the first Science and Christianity Showcase. It's a tour-de-force of Christian thinking about science. There are plenty of articles referenced, by topic:

The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Reality explores the metaphysical implications of quantum theory, a Christian view of science, scientific and Christian descriptions of reality, the value of such models to people's everyday existence, and the anthropic principle (I exist, therefore the universe had to be created a certain way).
Working with the Right Blueprint considers Christian approaches to science and technology. One author explores interdependencies between Science, the Bible, and sharing the Gospel. Another responds to the adversarial Christian attitude toward science, recognising science and technology as a gift. A further contributor discusses technology in the light of some Old Testament history (and a little prophecy).
Compatibility - Is It Possible? offers a claim that Christianity made modern science possible, acting more like a friend than an enemy. Elsewhere, the Galileo vs. Church story is recast as a battle not between science and Christianity, but between God and men, or between humans (scientists v. Christians). The limits of scientific inquiry are discussed in "Why Science Can't Prove (or Disprove) God", and "Clueless and Proud?".
Science and the Fall includes articles asserting that God intended us to do science, and how the imperfections and pain found on Earth, (including infertility, autism, neurological disorders, and sexual abnormalities) are a consequence of the Fall.
Ethical Questions tackles vexed issues such as Xenotransplants and Stem Cell treatments.
the final topic, Sharing the Knowledge, proposes a quantum leap in publishing scientific journals, via online collaboration tools.

A couple of pertinent quotes [via philbaker.net]

Niels Bohr:
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Martin Luther King Jnr:
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Diversity, tolerance, yada yada yada

2005-03-10T20:59:00.000+13:00

A commenter made the following statements. My responses follow each point:

a) I want New Zealand to be tolerant .. the separation of the state and church is one of the fundamental parts of the Enlightenment. You may not like it, but it is. The state has essentially forced its views of religion onto others, and that is unacceptable.

The state has not forced it views onto anybody. It is merely acknowledging the existence of a Deity whose holy Laws we can only aspire to. If anything, the converse would be more accurate: the established secular orthodoxy responds with hostility to anything that challenges its absolutist claims. As discussed in the above post on Western Civilization, the problem with the logical extension of the secular Enlightenment is that its proponents take things too far. They fail to recognise the Christian foundations of our culture, and think that any reference to religion should be removed from public life. Frankly I think this is inhuman. Public life, while not aggressively religious, should neither be aggressively atheistic. Remove the cult, and our culture loses its way. "Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint" (Somewhere in the bible). Now that Enlightenment humanists have captured education, government, and the media, Christianity is derided. People have turned to paganism to fill their natural thirst for God.

b) You need to look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), article 2.

Jean-Philippe Feldman writes:
It might seem provocative or inconsistent to criticize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948. Its detractors, whether they be Marxists or Conservatives have fallen into discredit. Notwithstanding, Hayek has courageously tried to criticize this constructivist piece whose impossible goal was to unite rights in the liberal tradition with those pertaining to the Marxist conception. Hayek shows that the new rights which are proclaimed in this fashion cannot be translated into juridical constraints without destroying forthwith the liberal order cherished by traditional rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the tools which enhances the depreciation of Law and, by the way, the annihilation of Freedom. This text has flourished thanks to its prestige and to the ignorance of those who have employed it. Its unique merit is to deserve oblivion.

c) The enlightenment has proved Christianity to be wrong on a number of fronts (evolution, the world being round, the impossibility of a supernatural being). Why should it be the centre of our society? Why should I be forced into following Christian festivals? Or do you only extend rights to Christians

Voltaire, your Enlightenment comrade, said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him"
Evolution does not preclude the existence of God. Evolution challenged the preconceptions of the established worldview. Nowadays the scientific "no divine intervention" assumption, has been extended to assert soulless materialism in every aspect of life, and tear down any claim to transcendent values such as Right and Wrong. The existence of God is by no means a settled debate in philosophy. The life and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most thoroughly attested event in human history (manuscript, inductive, historical), exceeding the evidence for Winston Churchill for example. The Catholic position of "theistic evolution" offers a coherent synthesis between Christianity and Science.
Before decrying Christianity as a publicly accepted faith, advocates of Atheism and Socialism would be wise to examine the outcomes of their philosophy: the bloodsoaked killing fields of WW2 Europe, the purges of Stalinist Russia, and the revolutionary tragedies of Communist China or Cambodia.
Samuel Silver, Chairman, Toward Tradition, writes:
After the fall of Nazism and Communism, the secular fundamentalists focused primarily on post-Christian Europe and American academia, turning both into hotbeds of anti-religious bigotry and virulent anti-Semitism. These self-proclaimed progressives espouse diversity, but are in fact very close-minded and hostile to all political, cultural, and especially religious opinions with which they disagree.

Over a century ago, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch anticipated modern secular fundamentalism with prophetic precision:
It is now no longer enough for the apostate to be able to live undisturbed according to his convictions, as he calls them; to him there is no well-being and no peace as long as his convictions have not become the only ones recognized as right and valid. He sees in the Law an intellectual slavery from which it is the Godly task of a second Moses to redeem his unfortunate brothers. In Torah-loyalty, he sees superstition, backwardness, and at the same time a calamity which is to blame for all the miseries of the past. He sees in liberation from the yoke of the Law a goal so high and so humanitarian that every means which seems capable of bringing about progress toward this great goal must be employed. He has reached the stage of waging fanatical campaigns of persecution against those loyal to the Law.

Extremists on either side can be dangerous if initiation of force is not limited by a strong Constitutional defense of individual rights and religious freedom. The secular side, however, offers the greatest risk to society. It contains no internalized mechanism for an objective moral code of human cooperation and must rely solely on the collectivized, legalistic force of government for citizens to defend themselves. It also contains no effective, common moral foundation for raising children, especially in a vacuum without an existent moral culture passed down from previous generations of religious tradition.

d) Yes Christianity is the origin of our society, but so to is Judaism, Paganism and animism. Why shouldn't we make these central to our society? We over-ride them with new ideas, and that has happened with Christianity, welcome to the 21st century

Thankyou for your reply; briefly let me say that in forming the edifice of western culture, the role of Judaism, Paganism, animism, atheism, etc, were miniscule compared with the major contributions of the Christian faith. It extended to every area of life, and Christendom grew strong because it was based on a sure and true foundation.
There are certain assumptions that science makes to work eg. that the creation is an orderly place, that human reasoning can be used as a tool in the search for knowledge of the creation, and so on. Religion, namely Christianity, provides the theological underpinning for these metaphysical assumptions. This is why Europe has seen the longest sustained period of scientific development. (read Stanley Jaki on this - fascinating). All other ancient cultures stagnated scientifically and mathematically because their theology was flawed.
References: 1 -- 2 -- 3
Update: PC terminology such as "diversity, tolerance, compassion" form an "unacceptable" mantra that seems to obviate rational thought and clear communication.
Update #2: Thanks for the "flat-earth" accusation, for now I have occasion to quote from the prophet Isaiah, (from about 800 BC I suppose): Isaiah 40:22 (NIV) --
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Come to think of it, I may write another post on surprising scientific insights from the Bible. Or conversely, the verification of Christianity by every field of human knowledge! [Shouldn't be too hard... ;o) ]

Political Quotes

2005-03-10T20:39:00.000+13:00

Borrowed from Intellectual Conservative, Light in Dark Places, and Kiwi Pundit.

Maimonides (1135-1204): It is "possible for a person to be born with a tendency to one of the virtues or one of the shortcomings - i.e., conduct [representative of this trait] will come easier to him than other types of conduct. He should not say that these shortcomings are already ingrained in his character and cannot be removed. For in every situation a person has the choice of changing from good to bad, and from bad to good. The choice is in his hands."

George Washington, 1796: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."

John Adams, 1798: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Harry Truman, 150 years later: "The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State."

G. K. Chesterton: "I am very glad that our fashionable fiction seems to be full of a return to paganism, for it may possibly be the first step of a return to Christianity. Neo-pagans have sometimes forgotten, when they set out to do everything the old pagans did, that the final thing the old pagans did was to get christened."

C. S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity: "Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."

Alice Cooper: "But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's rebellion."

Cicero: "When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself."

George Washington: "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force."

Abraham Lincoln: "In all that people can do for themselves, the government ought not to interfere."

John Stuart Mill: "The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power."

Helen Clark: "The government's role is whatever the government defines it to be."

Middle East meets West

2005-03-09T13:10:00.000+13:00

"God Save the Queen" points out that the West and Middle East share some great traditions:

the law codes of ancient Mesopotamia ... fit in nicely with my conviction that the Middle East is, by tradition, really part of what one might call the Greater West. It’s been pointed out before that the peoples of the Middle East have more in common with Europeans than with, say, the Chinese, whose civilisation has utterly different roots. In religious terms, the three great monotheisms are all children of Abraham, and culturally both Europe and the Middle East were both subject to the massive influence of Greek thought and tradition. In Europe this came through the medium of Rome, in the Middle East through the effects of Alexander’s empire.

In other words, whereas the Greater West can trace its traditions to Abraham, Hammurabi and Socrates, what we might call Greater China – that is, China itself and the countries which have historically under heavy Chinese cultural influence, notably Korea, Japan and Vietnam – have roots that go in a quite different direction, reaching back to Lao-Tze, Confucius and Gautama.

He has other worthwhile articles on Earthquake theology issues, a timeless passage from Ecclesiastes, and thoughts on Prayer.

New generation conservatives

2005-03-08T22:48:00.000+13:00

The very British "Edge of England's Sword", identifies an interesting trend in the youngest voters;

They are, as is well known, completely disconnected from the political process, but their political views might be surprising to many:

These first-time voters are dubbed the selfish generation. But the poll shows that 61 per cent worry about helping their parents in old age. They are more old-fashioned and authoritarian than their parents' generation and are very concerned about school discipline. More than half oppose the legalisation of drugs. The majority of first-time voters also think that mothers should stay at home to look after young children.

In other words, it appears that they've seen the mistakes their parents made and have therefore realised the wisdom in the ways of their more distant ancestors ... A large number are seriously worried, with fear of "higher taxes", mentioned by 81 per cent, at the top of the list. A large proportion of young people are strapped financially and the prospect of sharp tax rises after the coming election alarms many. Substantial proportions are also worried about whether they will be able to assist their parents financially in old age (61 per cent) and paying for their own continuing education (50 per cent).

This combination of worries about social disintegration and high taxes is natural Tory territory

Conservatism may have a bright future: this is the generation that was 25% aborted, whose parents divorced at the drop of a hat, who will have less earning power than their parents, so they esteem material wealth less than life experiences and time spent with the people they love. Go Gen Y!

UPDATE: In spite of jeers from the Left, evidence of this trend is not just a right-wing fantasy. (Is it right-wing to want to put the brakes on radical social reengineering, ever-increasing tax, growth in state power, or call for government accountability?) From Chicago Report:

Next Generation College Right: Emphasizes Responsibility, Not Theocracy
[As] one who helped establish a "Right" at UIC where previously none had existed, I had always felt that the events of 9/11 that had been so openly celebrated by the campus Left was actually the worst thing to happen to them and the Leftist academy.

... concepts of privatization, personal responsibility and respect for individual rights [are] the heart of the Next Gen-Conservative ...

I was shocked to see that out of all the "value" reassertion that is occurring among the next generation conservatives, mindless statism and prejudice against is not one of those values and a live-and-let-live ethic exists in its place. It's about time. The only consistent conservatism was the one that called for limited government and the live-and-let-live ethic.

From OpinionJournal:

Right on Campus: Conservatives begin to infiltrate the left's last redoubt.
The protests shocked the mainstream press, but to close observers of America's college scene lately they came as no surprise. For decades, conservative critics have bemoaned academe's monolithically liberal culture. Parents, critics note, spend fortunes to send their kids to top colleges, and then watch helplessly as the schools cram them with a diet of politically correct leftism often wholly opposed to mom and dad's own values.

But the left's long dominion over the university--the last place on earth that lefty power would break up, conservatives believed--is showing its first signs of weakening. The change isn't coming from the schools' faculty lounges and administrative offices, of course. It's coming from self-organizing right-of-center students and several innovative outside groups working to bypass the academy's elite gatekeepers.

The number of College Republicans has almost tripled ... to to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members ... Other conservative organizations, ranging from gun clubs (Harvard's has more than 100 students blasting away) to impudent newspapers and magazines, are budding at schools everywhere--even at Berkeley, crucible of the 1960s' student left. And right-of-center speakers invited by these clubs are drawing large and approving crowds.

Many of the students, especially the women, value getting married and raising a family with a fervor that would thrill the Family Research Council. "I'm an old-fashioned girl," avers Cornell's Miss Stewart. "I think it's wonderful when a mother can spend the majority of her time devoted to her child's early years. I plan to do just that." Reports University of Virginia sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox: "My biggest surprise in teaching here is that I am coming across growing numbers of postfeminist college women. They tend to be very bright and--other things being equal--would normally gravitate to feminist academics." Instead, Mr. Wilcox notes, they're looking for "a sane path forward for the revival of courtship and family life."

Notes Edward Morrissey, "Captain Ed" of the popular conservative blog Captain's Quarters, these kids "grew up on . . . moral relativism and internationalism, constantly fed the line that there was no such thing as evil in the world, only misunderstandings." Suddenly, on 9/11, this generation discovered that "there are enemies and they wanted to kill Americans in large numbers, and that a good portion of what they'd been taught was drizzly pap."

Yet a deeper reason for the rightward shift, which began well before 9/11, is the left's broader intellectual and political failure. American college kids grew up in an era that witnessed both communism's fall and the unchained U.S. economy's breathtaking productivity surge. They've seen that anyone willing to work hard--regardless of race or sex--can thrive in such an opportunity-rich system. "I'm only 20, so I don't remember segregation or the oppression of women--in fact, my mother had a very successful career since I was a kid," one student observed in an online discussion. "I look around and don't see any discrimination against minorities or women." Left-wing charges of U.S. economic injustice sound like so much BS to many kids today.

The destructive effects of "just do it" values on the family are equally evident to many undergrads, who have painfully felt those effects themselves or watched them rip up the homes of their friends. They turn to family values with the enthusiasm of converts ... Conservative ideas take on even greater allure for students when the authorities say they're verboten ... pervasive campus political correctness--the unfree speech codes, obligatory diversity-sensitivity seminars and school-sponsored performances of "The Vagina Monologues'--to the professorate's near-uniform leftism ... Student leftists ... regularly try to shut down or shut up conservative student publications, practicing what civil libertarian Nat Hentoff calls "free speech for me and not for thee."

Further links: International Young Democrat Union [IYDU.org] -- The Sexual Revolution and Teen Dating Trends [mentalhealth.about.com] -- Misreading Millenials [reason.com]

Perspective on Western Civilization

2005-03-08T19:20:00.000+13:00

A response to NZPolCom: quotes from James Kurth's essay "Western Civilization, Our Tradition"

Among scholarly interpreters of the West, it has been widely understood that Western civilization was formed from three distinct traditions: (1) the classical culture of Greece and Rome; (2) the Christian religion, particularly Western Christianity; and (3) the Enlightenment of the modern era.2 Although many interpreters have seen Western civilization as a synthesis of all three traditions, others have emphasized the conflicts among these threads. As we shall see, the conflict between the Christian religion and the Enlightenment has been, and remains, especially consequential.
...

Christianity shaped Western civilization in many important ways. Christian theology established the sanctity of the individual believer and called for obedience to an authority (Christ) higher than any secular ruler (Caesar), ideas that further refined and supported the concept of liberty under law. Christian institutions, particularly the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church in its ongoing struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor and local monarchs, bequeathed to the West the idea of a separation, and therefore a limitation, of powers.
...

Today, the only Western tradition embraced by the political, intellectual, and economic elites of the West is that of the Enlightenment. For American political and economic elites, this largely means the British (or Anglo-American) Enlightenment, with its emphasis on the liberty of individuals, institutionalized in liberal democracy and free markets.
...

The rejection of the Christian faith by Western elites does not mean that they have rejected all faiths. Despite the claims and conceits of rationalists and scientists, every human being believes in some things that cannot be proven (and therefore cannot be established by reason) or that cannot be seen (and therefore cannot be established by science) and that therefore have to be taken on faith. Ever since the coming of the Enlightenment, Western elites have adhered to a variety of secularist and universalist faiths, which in effect have been religions without God. Kenneth Minogue has identified these ersatz faiths as (1) the idea of progress, (2) Marxism, and (3) "Olympianism," which is the contemporary belief that an enlightened intellectual elite can and should bring about "human betterment...on a global scale by forcing the peoples of the world into a single community based on the universal enjoyment of appropriate human rights."8 As Minogue demonstrates, each of these secular religions has identified Christianity as its enemy.
...

The principle enemy of Western civilization is within the West itself. The West's great enemy today is the contemporary version of the Enlightenment, especially the French Enlightenment. Because of its universalist pretensions and illusions, its adherents have made the peoples of the West undiscriminating about other cultures and unconfident about their own. They have therefore made the West disoriented and vulnerable to assault from the East, and especially from Islam. This assault may come from sustained or catastrophic attacks by transnational networks of Islamic terrorists. Or it may come from similar attacks by members of the large and alienated Muslim communities now residing within the West, especially in Europe. However, for Western civilization, Islam is merely a disease of the skin; the Enlightenment, has mutated into a disease of the heart.9
...

Within the West itself, who are the conscious defenders of Western civilization in all its authenticity and fullness, and not merely of its Enlightenment universalist heresy? Certainly not the liberals. Liberals in the intellectual sector (academia and the media) are largely multiculturalists and transnationalists; those in the business sector are largely globalists; and those in the political sector (most obviously in the Democratic Party in the United States) largely represent these post-Western intellectual and economic views.
...

The true defenders of the Western traditions will be the traditional conservatives. They are able to recognize that the central and crucial tradition of Western civilization is the Christian tradition. The Christian religion assumed to itself and developed the best elements of the classical tradition, while subordinating them to a higher Biblical truth. The Christian religion also gave rise to the best elements of the Enlightenment tradition, while also subordinating them to a higher Biblical truth. It is the Christian tradition, in other words, that kept the other Western traditions in balance. Perhaps in our time it is the calling of those few traditional conservatives found within the educated elite to reach out to the large numbers of Christians within the wider population, to help deepen their understanding of the major issues before us, and to give voice to their Christian-and Western- convictions and concerns.

The protagonists of the contemporary version of the Enlightenment may think that they will create a global and universal civilization, both abroad and at home, but the evidence is accumulating that they have instead opened the doors to the barbarians, both without (e.g., Islamic terrorists) and within (e.g., pagan disregard for the dignity of human life). The best defense against the new barbarians will be found in the Christian religion. With the Christian tradition, Western civilization became the most creative, indeed the highest, civilization in human history. Without the Christian tradition, Western civilization could come to nothing. With a revival of the Christian tradition, Western civilization will not only prevail over the new barbarians, but it will become more truly civilized than it is today.

Mister Speaker!

2005-03-08T18:58:00.000+13:00

"NZ Political Comments" went to see our new Speaker of the House, Margaret Wilson (heaven forfend!), revealing his desire to purge NZ of the Christian ethos. My response will be in the next post.

St. Molesworth (whatever that means), also chips in with a new Top 10 ways Parliament will be different.

Thinking happy thoughts

2005-03-08T18:22:00.000+13:00

The ultimate Kiwi blogger, one Mr. David P. Farrar (esq.), proprietor of kiwiblog.co.nz (I am not worthy of a link from his blogroll), has started a local meme around the NZ blogosphere. He has attempted to take a break from his usual rhetoric against all things Left, (for the sake of his mental health), and embarked on a procedure of identifying admirable qualities (here and here) about each of our honourable Members of Parliament. The rest of the local bloggers are looking on with amusement; what could he possibly say about Lianne Dalziel, or Ashraf Choudhary?

The denizens of that lair of right-wing iniquity, "Dog Biting Men" have been inspired to present a "realistic" account of the political parties, and their adherents.

The eternally youthful EverLastingMan provides his take on the parties, appearing despondent about our representatives, but hoping in the common sense of the grassroots public. I also hope common sense will prevail, but I doubt it is very common these days. He writes:

GK Chesterton was absolutely right when he stated; "When it comes to matters of national interest, I do not care for the posturings of our leaders; give me the common sense opinions of the raging mob anytime; after all, they are the ones who have to live with the decisions; our political leaders are immune to normal rules, as much as they are immune to normal behaviours, and one suspects, normal patterns of thought".

Of course that is the great fear among the political and social elite; that the mob actually realises and acts upon this raw democratic ability. That is why Helen (and the others) spend so much time grooming the media and making sure that everything is kept under a tight seal.

Labour helps families!?!?

2005-03-08T12:20:00.000+13:00

A change of tune from my usual anti-Labour ranting. The Government is looking to make it easier for families to own their own home. Which I totally applaud, in light of the overheating housing market. It's inaccessible to young people already burdened with student loans, or low income earners. The price bubble exacerbates the problem and has eroded the Kiwi dream. The widespread practice of owning several houses expedites wealth transfer from poor to rich. My generation has significant hurdles to face to enter the market.
From the Herald article:

[Since National's reforms in 1991], apparently limitless credit fuelled a rise in the prices of low-end houses in Auckland from 3.4 times the income of a typical low-income working family in 1991 to 5.1 times the typical low income a decade later. But as prices soared, the proportion of homes owned by the people who live in them, once the highest in the world, dropped from 73.8 per cent in 1991 to 68 per cent.

Now Prime Minister Helen Clark has signalled that the free-market experiment is over. Already Kiwibank - ironically, chaired by Bolger - has made 750 loans totalling $87 million under a pilot state-backed mortgage insurance scheme to help low-income people into homes. More is promised in the Budget on May 19.

"Our Government is concerned at falling rates of home ownership," Clark told Parliament last month. "The mortgage insurance pilot introduced in September 2003 was this Government's first step back into this area of policy. How to encourage savings which could lead to home ownership is under consideration."

Contraception, education, travel, and globalisation are among the complex factors delaying home ownership. But..

New Zealand intensified these effects by cutting taxes on the top income-earners from 66 per cent to 33 per cent (partially restored to 39 per cent in 2000). Welfare benefits were cut. Unemployment soared, unions shrank, and wages dropped from 55 per cent of the national income in 1983 to 43 per cent today.

The result is two-sided. On one side, home ownership has dropped because wages have slipped relative to house prices. The other side of the same coin is that higher-income earners have more spare cash to buy the houses that first-home buyers once would have bought.

[People already established in properties] "shut the first-home buyers out", using tax dodges such as "loss attributing qualifying companies" ... banks lend up to 95 per cent of the value of a property, you can acquire a $500,000 house for as little as $25,000 up-front. If property values rise by 5 per cent pushing the value of the house up to $525,000, you double your investment, tax-free. First-home buyers, who get no tax deductions for their mortgage payments, can't compete.

Housing NZ says that in 1991, 62 per cent of Auckland households headed by working adults aged 20 to 39 would have been able to service a mortgage on a low-end two- or three-bedroom Auckland home. By 2001, only 31 per cent could afford it.
[...]
"This is not just the bottom 20 per cent of the population, it's also middle New Zealand. So any solution has to be capable of assisting many, many New Zealanders to get ahead."

Ballad of the Unborn

2005-03-07T17:41:00.000+13:00

by Fay Clayton.

My shining feet will never run
On early morning lawn;
My feet were crushed before they had
A chance to greet the dawn.

My fingers now will never stretch
To touch the winning tape;
My race was done before I learned
The smallest steps to take.

My growing height will never be
Recorded on the wall;
My growth was stopped when I was still
Unseen, and very small.

My lips and tongue will never taste
The good fruits of the earth;
For I myself was judged to be
A fruit of little worth.

My eyes will never scan the sky
For my high-flying kite;
For when still blind, destroyed were they
In the black womb of night.

I'll never stand upon a hill
Spring's winds in my hair;
Aborted winds of thought closed in
On motherhood's despair.

I'll never walk the shores of life,
Or know the tides of time;
For I was coming, but unloved;
And that my only crime.

Nameless am I, a grain of sand,
One of the countless dead;
But the deed that made me ashen grey
Floats on seas of red.

Fetal development [from Voice for Life NZ]:

18 days : the child's heart begins to beat
42 days : the brain waves can be recorded, skeleton is complete, reflexes are present, hiccoughs first occur
18 weeks : the vocal cords work and baby can cry

Abortion is the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of the most vulnerable Kiwi children. Something to consider when voting this year.

Poem for Lent

2005-03-07T10:38:00.000+13:00

Wordsworth’s Recovery, from his Ecclesiastical Poems:

Lance, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,
Or staff more harmless than a shepherd’s crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world–to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes: within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight’s silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;
Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,
For recompence–their own perennial bower.

[via Pontifications]

Aspiring to Sweden's "success"

2005-03-05T19:12:00.000+13:00

EverlastingMan has a great riposte to our glorious leader's aspiration to be like Sweden (and their high tax regime): as they have discarded all traditional values and embarked on an ill-considered social experiment, they are now confused as to why their society is insular, balkanized, and rude.

Perhaps it is because the ultimate result of establishing Man as the centrepiece of existence and morality, logically leads to a culture of selfishness and discarding all moral restraint.

The publication used by EverlastingMan, thelocal.se, is filled with disturbing stories. My brief sampling found...: Pornographic stories read to 6-yo schoolkids, the discovery of brothels in unexpected places, national hockey players in sex scandal, or the growth of a despicable white slave trade in prostitution.

EverlastingMan describes their colossal welfare machine, and its effects on Swedish families. Fewer people opting for marriage, more children born out of wedlock, no subsidies for male parents (??!!), fertility treatment for lesbian couples (but none for single heterosexuals), abortion relentlessly advocated, politicians double-dipping and poorly educated, worrisome sick leave trends, and an acute epidemic of depression.

Great plan, Labour.
The implementation seems to be on track.

Thirst for God

2005-03-05T18:30:00.000+13:00

A.W. Tozer wrote in the preface to his landmark book The pursuit of God the following:

In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct `interpretations' of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water...But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders...There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy. I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real. Milton's terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his: `The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.'

[via pastorblob]

Pontifications on ECUSA

2005-03-05T17:14:00.000+13:00

The eloquent Pontificator has bravely stepped into the murky waters of the gay marriage debate. Prompted by a Salty Vicar article on ECUSA's recent decisions to affirm and bless same-sex unions, he writes:

Where I disagree strongly with John is his suggestion that a more credible interpretation of St. Paul needs to be presented. I’m sorry, but this simply sounds dishonest. Paul is Paul. We cannot change what he wrote because we no longer find it credible or helpful. Far more honest is to simply admit one’s disagreement with Paul. With all of his fellow Jews of his day, the Apostle believed that all forms of homosexual intercourse violated the divinely-given structures of creation. Surely the exegetical work of Robert Gagnon and Richard Hays has exposed, once and for all, the tendentiousness of all who try to make St Paul more amenable to modern sensibilities. Agree or disagree with him, but Paul believed that homosex was wrong. So did Jesus.

I might also add that the teaching St. Paul and of Holy Scripture also directly attacks the widespread heterosexual practice of fornication, cohabitation, and adultery. We all stand under the judgment of the Word of God.

The problem with disagreeing with Paul is that one is disagreeing with an Apostle, and the Apostles are the divinely appointed mediators of the Gospel. Now not everything an Apostle says must be taken as divine revelation universally applicable to all times and places; but the fact remains that the Church catholic has always interpreted Paul, within the canon of Holy Scripture and her Holy Tradition, as authoritatively proscribing all erotic relations outside the bonds of Holy Matrimony. And so we are right back to the foundational and primary question of authority. It’s not just about sex. It’s about authority!

As may be expected for this touchy issue, the comments section is lively. One of the best observations was #39 [Craig]:

For a society that claims to have improved women’s status as moral agents, ours sure has lessened women’s moral responsibilities. Women who conceive now have the absolute right to kill their offspring without the consent of the fathers; if these women choose not to do so, they have the right to compel the fathers to provide support. (When will “women’s-rights” advocates start lobbying for unwed fathers to have the right to disavow their offspring or compel abortion? Right.) Men still have the (residual and fading) expectation and legal obligation to support their families, but the incongruity between this and the new sexual ethic means they no longer have any unsentimental reason to seek marriage.

Our society is throwing away civilization for the sole reason that we prefer having the ability to couple randomly like brute beasts on the savannah. This part of the human condition is the consequence of the Fall, and we should not glory in it.

Prolific philosopher

2005-03-02T20:03:00.000+13:00

Richard at Philosophy, etc usually writes obscure investigations into human cognition or philosophical conundrums. Recently he forayed into critiquing religion in general, with his "Carnival of the Godless". Not very convincing, just re-hashing a bunch of tired clichés.

I gave up when one of his commenters "caynazzo" echoed Pontius Pilate with a confident assertion that there is no such category as "Truth". (Is that a true statement?) "Caynazzo" is trying to apply the scientific method to religious truth claims. This is a good plan, but it may not lead to a revelation of God. Caynazzo's dismissive attitude appears quite prejudiced and childish, given the vast apologetics resources available.

Some reasonable positions held by Christian apologists:

The Catholic Church, and probably most other denominations hold that God's existence can in fact be rationally demonstrated. (Unfortunately some literalist ("fundamentalist") churches also teach pseudo-science, undermining their credibility).
Calvinism (and fideism) imply that an empirical, materialist, intellectual approach is not applicable to a dimension of life that is spiritual, subjective, and faith-based.
Alvin Plantinga holds that belief in the existence of God can be rational and indeed a species of knowledge, even though the existence of God cannot be demonstrated. After all, there are kinds of knowledge that are rational but do not proceed through demonstration: sensory knowledge, for instance.

Plantinga's approach looks the most realistic to me.

Marriage, families key to success

2005-03-02T14:54:00.000+13:00

As I went for a haircut last week, I spied the recent issue of Unlimited magazine. It speaks for rampantly capitalist ideals such as free enterprise, small businesses, and competitive market practices. Things not popular with Labour's elitist "we-know-best", interventionist agenda.

In particular, Vincent Heeringa's rant about marriage and employment. Highlights:

Worried about your children's job prospects? Get married

The problem with uttering anything to do with family, marriage, fidelity and values is that deep down, everyone suspects a minute later the opinion-holder will be found [...] in a Peter Plumley-Walker-type embarrassment. Moral conservatives attract hypocrisy like pride attracts a fall.

Well, I’m going to take my chance on uttering an opinion that’s as conservative as apple pie.

I commented to a friend recently about the downstream effects on employment that the increasingly numbers of socially dysfunctional families must have. He replied, if it’s reliable, hard working and mentally well-adjusted employees you’re looking for, try asking one simple question at the recruitment interview: “Are your parents married?” (He also said) marriage is a predictor of success in later life.

He unfurled a scroll of data to back his case, ... the most comprehensive being a study, “Why marriage matters” by 13 US social scientists in 2002, which concluded that children of two-parent, married families earn more, get in trouble less, live longer, are happier, avoid drug and alcohol abuse, require less government assistance for rehab, counselling, medical and housing programmes, and appear less frequently in the criminal justice system. [The next few paragraphs have more supporting data]

[paraphrase: Public discussion of the civil unions is predicated on supporting every anomalous structure, rather than encouraging and rewarding the married family ideal]

It’s funny how no other area of social life attracts such defeatism. You’d never hear “hey, people smoke anyway” or “it’s just too hard to convince kids to use a condom” or “breast cancer — aw shucks”. The volume of paper generated and government money spent on all three of those issues is based on the firm belief they are worth fixing.

Given what the above suggests about the power of marriage to affect long-term health, education and economic outcomes, why is so little effort put into backing agencies that promote and support marriage?

I suspect it has to do with politics. Across the ditch John Howard has been vocal in affirming the family as basis of society — and he means mum, dad and kids. Recently 132 countries of the 192 at the United Nations adopted a declaration, known as the Doha Declaration for the Family, drawn up by representatives of governments and NGOs meeting in Doha at the end of November. It affirms that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to the widest possible protection and assistance by society and the State”. In supporting the declaration, member states also agreed to “uphold, preserve and defend the institution of marriage”.

New Zealand didn’t sign the declaration.

Depleting the cultural capital of our Christian roots

2005-02-28T17:55:00.000+13:00

The Pontificator has a devastating critique of our society's liberal secular orthodoxy:

Most of my professional life is spent interacting with secular liberal academics. What I tell them is that they are living off the cultural capital of Judeo-Christian moral understanding and depleting it quickly. Most liberal academics say they favor marriage and just want it to be available to homosexuals and heterosexuals on equal terms. They support “tolerance,” they say, and oppose “discrimination,” but they misconceive both toleration and discrimination.

I try to show them the unsavory logical consequences of their willingness to equate sodomy with marital sexual love. To justify same-sex “marriage” one must abandon the concept of marriage as a one-flesh union of sexually complementary spouses. But if we do that—if we embrace the idea that marriage is fundamentally an emotional union of people who find their relationship enhanced by mutually agreeable sex acts of any type—we eliminate the rational ground for restricting marriage to two people (as opposed to three or five or eight) and for regarding marriage as intrinsically requiring mutual pledges of exclusivity and fidelity. People who accept same-sex “marriage” have no basis of principle (as opposed to mere sentiment or subjective preference) for opposing polygamy, polyamory (group marriage), promiscuity (”open marriages”), and the like. What then is left of marriage? Nothing.

Similarly, most secular liberal academics do not want to join Peter Singer in endorsing infanticide and the mass production of children to be killed in infancy for the purpose of harvesting transplantable organs. I try to show them that by accepting abortion they remove any principled moral basis for objecting to such a nightmarish view. After all, birth is of no moral significance. The child a moment or a month or nine months prior to birth is the same living human being as the child a moment or a month or nine months (or 90 years) after birth. My argument against the rather chaotic collection of moral views held by many secular scholars is not that they violate the tenets of Jewish or Christian faith (though they do); it is that they fail—sometimes spectacularly fail—the test of reason.

Usenet

2005-02-04T17:54:00.000+13:00

DPF has a post up about the old days of Usenet. Apparently AOL is not going to host it anymore: too much crap on there these days. Boosted by recent articles in Time, the Listener, and The Economist, blogs are the trendy "new" medium. Although they have been around as long as the internet.

A few memories.

I also first encountered Usenet in 1996 when I returned to University after a stint working at a steel factory. I used to sit up in the advanced maths lab reading some weird ass newsgroups, with Netscape Navigator on a Unix mainframe, until security came round to kick me out late at night. Sad I know. But it was a bit of a thrill to find other nerdy people around the world. Back when the Net was young and not full of spammers and lame AOLers.

I used to post a bit on nz.soc.religion, alt.cuddle, and lurked often in aus.flame.the.usa, alt.usenet.kooks, alt.usenet.legends, alt.religion.kibology, rec.sport.rugby.union, talk.origins, sci.math.*, sci.physics.* . Had a lot of laughs and found a lot of interesting and intelligent commentary on the state of the world. Did you know that on Sept 11, the regulars at alt.religion.kibology frantically posted messages to find out if everybody was OK? Other newsgroups no doubt did the same. It seemed like a high point of the NG community.

It was where the action was online. Sometimes I go back to have a look at the NG's, but the Google interface & Outlook Express seem inferior to the old Netscape thing. As the years went by my favourite groups got filled with spammers, trolls, flamers, and general idiots (WebTV arrrgh!). The whole community thing was fractured as more of the planet came online, and the tone was lowered. The novelty has sadly worn off.

Bye bye LA, hello Vatican

2004-11-27T13:39:00.000+13:00

Gerard Baker has a modest proposal: American liberals and European traditionalists should swap continents
The Times, November 11, 2004

It will feel good to be an Englishman in America again this week. When the natives hear my accent there will be little smiles and nods of appreciation. The parents at my daughters’ school will make friendly jokes about bringing back the colonies. They will inquire politely about the Queen and Sir Elton John. The really knowledgeable will ask about the ribs of David Beckham (though they might pronounce it Beck-Ham). Finally one of them will utter the words that explain it all: “I just love your Prime Minister.”

Yes, Tony Blair is here again and Britain’s stock, already high thanks to decades of warm feeling engendered by Winston Churchill, Brideshead Revisited, Margaret Thatcher and The Rolling Stones, will soar once again. It’s hard to overstate the affection in which the British Prime Minister is held over here.

Even Democrats, apart from a sour few who think that their new Labour counterpart has betrayed them, will mutter how they could have supported the war if only Mr Blair had been making the case. Indeed, there was a write-in campaign, so I’m told, to put Mr Blair’s name on the ballot in last week’s election. I don’t know how many votes he got, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t run Ralph Nader close in a few districts down south and out west.

But Americans are dimly aware, too, that Mr Blair is an isolated figure in Britain and Europe. They know that his respect and admiration for America, its policies and values, is not widely shared on the other side of the Atlantic. They sense that much of Europe is a very different sort of place.

Much has been made of that divide in the past week. European reaction to the election has been predictably angry and uncomprehending. It has cemented the view that America and Europe are headed on irreversibly divergent courses.

But I suspect that the events of the past week, and specifically the juxtaposition of President Bush’s re-election with the Rocco Buttiglione affair, in which the European commissioner was rejected because of his views on personal morality, demonstrate something else. America and Europe aren’t completely different, but mirror opposites, politically, socially, culturally. Narrow but decisive majorities on both sides of the Atlantic are pushing the two sides farther apart. In America, traditionalists and believers in moral values are squeezing the secular moral relativists until their agnostic pips squeak. In Europe, it’s the latter who have the upper hand; the religiously observant who feel besieged.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why don’t the US and Europe orchestrate an enormous migratory swap? All those Americans who feel that they can no longer live in a land of pious, life-respecting, unilateralist, flag-waving patriots should be encouraged to migrate to Europe, where they will reinforce the majority for the secularist elites. Europeans who feel increasingly alienated in a continent in which any mention of Jesus provokes sniggering derision and where ideas such as marriage, family and faith are regarded as bigoted and fuddy-duddy should move to America.

It would be a win-win, as they say here. Europe would benefit. Gone would be all those tiresome sorts who stand in the way of European unification. The American cosmopolitan elite is firmly in favour. They would like nothing more than to create a peace and love-pursuing, multilateralist, European super-nanny power.

Some things in America wouldn’t change much, New York would be as cosmopolitan as ever; there would be the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, European Jews. Only they wouldn’t spend their time sneering at the rest of the continent. San Francisco might lose some of the more racy aspects of its character, which would be a shame. But there is always a price to pay.

Culturally, Europe might be the net gainer. Most of Hollywood would relocate to Cannes. That might not go down well with the French but they would get used to it. The old Continent would also get all those novelists and rock stars. Bruce Springsteen could write plangent ballads about never being able to get a plumber in Tuscany when you want one. Michael Moore could turn his distorting lens on the glories of the Brussels bureaucracy. And they could all happily keep the BBC going for generations.

In America, we might be left with only Mel Gibson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But would we really need anyone else?

Economically, the picture would be mixed. George Soros could give back some of the money he made when the pound fell out of the ERM by paying European levels of taxation. The US might lose some of its Silicon Valley stars. But think of the demographic advantages. The displaced Europeans would be the procreators. The US would enhance its population growth and its long-term economic prospects. With abortion and gay marriage actively encouraged in Europe, the chances are that the old Continent ’s senescence would accelerate rapidly.

Politically, Europe could have the United Nations — they could station it where its spiritual soul is already — hard by the Quai d’Orsay. In return, America would get the Vatican. What better place to put it than the City of Angels, perhaps on the site of the old Paramount Studios.

There are other advantages. America would become a pre-eminent football nation; European pop music would become tolerable. But there would be some dislocations, of course.

In America there would have to be some constitutional changes. The ban on foreigners from becoming president would have to be lifted. Not least to reflect the fact that the Democrats’ desperate search for the elusive perfect candidate would be over. The one man who combines respect for moral values, genuine piety, a firm belief in the virtues of US foreign policy and an ability to appeal to the masses of Middle America would be available, and frankly, at a bit of a loss, on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

There would be no need for a write-in campaign. Tony Blair would be on the ballot. And he would win in a landslide.

Fallujah option: Time out!?

2004-11-19T11:52:00.000+13:00

JH sent me his wise insights:

I imagine I would be a mite jumpy if some of my mates had been killed by booby trapped wounded people playing dead. I think he did the right thing. It is a pity that the people who want to hang him weren't there. If the marine concerned had felt that he had done anything wrong, and was in the habit of killing people who pissed him off, do you think that the reporter or his film would have made it away from the engagement? Plenty of opportunities would exist for the marine to frag him with a captured kalashnikov. Quite simply, if you put this soldier away then you are unaware of the pressures and realities of a combat zone. We aren't talking about executing people in the middle of a street. He didn't kill him with a pistol shot to the temple. The man wasn't a kneeling pleading person with his hands tied behind his back. We are talking about someone in a LAWLESS zone trying to save his life and the life of his friends. This guys wasn't just following orders. He was taking the recommendation on board that people who play dead could be rigged to explode when someone comes to investigate. Hell, if I was being attacked by a superior force and believed that martyrdom was the only guarentee of getting to heaven, I'd have a bomb strapped to me. If I got wounded then I would quite happily wait for a bunch of enemy soldiers to get close. I could take 3 or 4 with me. I also don't end up being a burden on our own side and I can't give away any intelligence to the enemy.

Now I agree that there should be INDEPENDANT inquiries into war crimes as a standard follow up to any military action. There is a twofold reason. Firstly if your guys are well trained and behaved then they are cleared by a disinterested party and anything the other side says is just so much crap and that is obvious. Secondly, if something has happened then it gets dealt to pronto.

As an aside, the sort of people who want to deal to this guy probably also don't believe in smacking. Perhaps then they should suggest a time out. Now let's see. The normal formula for time out is a minute per year. If the marine was say 26 then that equates to 26 minutes. How much time out should the insurgents get?

Maybe we should outlaw war? Who would enforce it? How do you enforce a time out on a person with a gun and a willingness to use it? Imagine if this had applied to WW2. The allies choose to outlaw war. Chamberlain sends a letter to Hitler saying that if he doesn't stop his warring now then Britain will have no choice but to tell him off and put him in time out! Naughty Hitler! Of course it isn't his fault really. It is societies fault. Of course who makes up society?

Just try doing this one with your neighbour. "Hey neighbour stop beating your wife and children! If you don't I shall be forced to put you in time out! I shall enforce it with the voice of reason and a stern look." The neighbour then proceeds to beat you to a pulp. He then returns to beating his wife and kid. Where are the police? Well they could only stop the nasty neighbour by using actual violence or by implying violence would be used. If the neighbour grabs a gun to deal with them then they can choose to leave, stay and get shot, or get their own guns. Looks like war to me!

Bloggers also fighting over Fallujah

2004-11-18T03:07:00.000+13:00

SockThief examines MSM outrage over the US "war crime" in Fallujah, versus its blasé attitude to yet another detestable crime by vile terrorist insurgents.

NoRightTurn then takes it upon himself to write an article worthy of Al-Jazeera. He(?) suggests that the apparent executioner will get off, by spuriously questioning the integrity of US military justice.

He then smears the attack on Fallujah as a careless assualt on civilians, even though the US has shown heroic restraint and respect for the wishes of the interim government, by delaying the invasion as long as possible. They warned civilians to leave for several weeks. What brilliant alternative does NRT suggest for the USA? It seems he would be happy to allow rampant murder, lawlessness, and terrorist recruiting to continue in that benighted city.

How about this for US moral superiority: THEIR TROOPS WEAR A UNIFORM, they do not hide behind innocents, using them as human shields. US forces aim for minimum civilian casualties, terrorists glorify death and rejoice in maximising mass murder.

NoRightTurn is blinded by rabid anti-Americanism.
SageNZ provides a cure for this ailment here and here.

We are lost and vulnerable

2004-10-03T13:20:00.000+13:00

David Round finds us weak and forgetting the basis of the life we humans are meant to lead.
Christchurch Press, Tuesday September 7, 2004

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Our civilisation is old and in decay. We are pygmies, walking among the giant monuments – of law, of art, of learning – our ancestors built, taking them for granted, and hardly interested.
We are so sheltered from the harsh realities of life that we can hardly believe they ever existed.

War, oppression, hunger – we have read of them in books, of course. But history has become legend, legend myth. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.

Surely everything will go on just as it always has, without any effort on our part?

But beyond our borders the darkness is gathering. Cruel strange men are growing in strength and moving against us. They have their allies in our own councils, filling our minds with doubts, clouding our vision, weakening our resolve.

If we are to save ourselves we must be like our ancestors. We must turn back to the old ways. Again we must be strong and virtuous, and true to the eternal principles on which our civilisation was founded. Only thus may we hope to stand secure against the barbarism that threatens to engulf the West.

Some, of course, would dismiss this opinion as pessimistic. They might call it chauvinist or reactionary. Warning that we are becoming an increasingly selfish, lazy and ugly nation are derided as the views of narrow-minded or outdated bigots.

It is heresy to suggest that any stranger could ever have any improper or selfish motive – or that we ever have any good ones.

We hate ourselves; and yet at the same time continue to have faith in a perpetual progress which will evidently continue despite our own deficiencies.

Here, however, is a remarkable inconsistency; for the gloomy views of the preceding paragraphs, derided by the enlightened, are the framework and substance of a very popular book trilogy recently made into a very popular trilogy of films.

It is, of course, as you may well have noticed, the setting of The Lord of the Rings.

One of the most remarkable features of the whole of The Lord of the Rings phenomenon has been the enthusiasm with which a government of “reformers”, feminists, Left-wingers, and general progressives and stirrers have embraced a worldview fundamentally disagrees with all their analyses and aspirations.

In Middle-Earth everything is darkening; yet we are informed recently that we live in a benign strategic environment.

In Middle-Earth – in the Shire of the hobbits, anyway – folk enjoy drinking, and horseplay, and also enjoy smoking a herb called weed in long pipes. They even smoke in inns.

In Middle-Earth the good are beautiful, and the evil orcs hideous of aspect – characterisation very insensitive to members of the deformity community. The human allies of orcs include Asian-looking pirates and some very Arab-looking characters on elephants.

Before the last battle Aragorn cries, “Now is the age of men!”

Actually, Emily Panckhurst and Kate Sheppard need not turn in their graves. (I wonder if they would feel guilty though, about only keeping the home fires burning, watching, waiting and perhaps weeping, while men go into battle.)

Aragorn means, of course, that now is the age of the race of men, as opposed to elves or dwarves or hobbits. More importantly, perhaps, it is the age of men as opposed to the age of trees, or of machines.

We seem to have lost humanity as an ideal. Some of us worship machines, productivity, an insane mechanical world of work and wealth; the sin of avarice.
Others flee in the opposite direction and abandon humanity for the worship of the wild; the sin of sloth.

But salvation lies in neither direction. We must love God’s creation, and we must use the clever minds that He gave us, but we can live neither in the factory nor in the wild.

The ideal of The Lord of the Rings is a land of quiet fruitful fields and a harmonious social order. Different social classes have their own functions, all useful and worthy of respect. There is no mechanical equality. Rulers and ruled are imbued with a sense of deep responsibility and obligation to serve the common good.

One of the book’s central elements is, of course, the return of the king. Ancient tradition is to be treasured and restored, not mindlessly swept away as no longer relevant.

The Lord of the Rings was a man’s film in some ways. A suspicious moisture made itself felt at the corners of my eyes, and there were definitely sounds of blubbing elsewhere in the theatre. From my observations, looking slyly for red eyes later, most came from men.

In Middle-Earth, victory is won by force of arms, by courage and self-sacrifice. Men are prepared to die for their homeland, and for their families and kindred.

They do this because they love.

They die well because there is a purpose in their lives and in their death, and a meaning which we can no longer understand. They love the land itself, they love their countrymen, they love where they came from and their ancient and established customs; all those things, in fact, make them what they are.

Macaulay asked:
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?

They fight so that the good things may stay the same.

It is love that motivates them, not the worship of an inhuman idea, or the narrow hatreds of wowsers who seem interested only in stopping things and have forgotten the wellsprings of joy that underlie all life.

If our present Government were in charge in Middle-Earth, the return of the king would be impossible, for the ancient monarchy would have been abolished.

Defence against Mordor would be impossible, for the army would have been abolished, or replaced with a “peace-keeping force”. Swords or spears and other such weapons would, like smacking and hunting, have been long banned.

The family is becoming an increasingly threatened species, and so there would be rather less for men to fight for.

We would probably be sending aid to the Dark Lord in Mordor, and would have an Orc resettlement policy. Substantial numbers of new Orc citizens would be on social welfare, and of course the human rights legislation would forbid discrimination against them.

There is hope for a world that understands and loves The Lord of the Rings.

David Round teaches law at the University of Canterbury.

Big Brother's buzzwords

2004-09-23T02:24:00.000+12:00

Over at Turnabout, I respond to an article: Book notes: The Long Truce

jkalb> It's a book-length treatment of a constant theme here at Turnabout, that "tolerance" as a principle — the demand that standards other than money, power and the like be treated as purely personal commitments of no public authority — doesn't have much to do with actually being tolerant and is mostly just an aspect of the absolute state. [...]

robertp>: Big Brother's buzzwords

Tolerance, Diversity, and Compassion: three much-abused words in the liberal lexicon. They encompass so many vague concepts that they are a useful way of obfuscating the truth and re-casting debate in terms of some kind of civil rights movement.

Tolerance : you must be quiet while selfish people broadcast their immorality through every media, fill children's minds with filth, deconstruct the nuclear family, and use legal sleight-of-hand to legitimise perversion.

Diversity : you must sit down and do nothing while your nation and culture are changed overnight by teeming masses from the third world. All the wealth, education, and culture produced by centuries of peaceful Western democracy, should be handed over to parasitic invaders who have no altruistic intent, but great skill in leeching from welfare programs, outnumbering long-established subcultures, and voting more benefits to themselves.

Compassion : there is no such thing as sin any more. If a crime is committed, then 'the system' is to blame, and the criminal must be a victim of the 'root cause' of factors which drove him to 'act out' his victimhood. Thus society must treat criminals with great compassion, because we all share their guilt. As our great axiom of liberal secular humanism states, "All people are basically good". Evil as a category does not exist. (forget about trivial things like victims rights, justice done & seen to be done, personal responsibility)

Three forgotten virtues in today's society:
Poverty, Chastity, Obedience.

denunzio> The real point of Big Brother's buzzwords

To me, the matter is as plain as day. These buzzwords are nothing more than propaganda weapons to be used to undermine, dissolve, and completely destroy any civilization based on ancient common sense, and particularly those societies having a Christian heritage (whether properly or improperly speaking), so that it may be refashioned according to a literally diabolical paradigm.

Big Brother's "political correctness" is not only comprised of a pack of lies, it itself as a system is one big lie: it pretends to affirm certain concepts as positive ideals, i.e., things it stands for, when in naked truth, PC is nothing more than an amalgamation of anything and everything directly against truth in both the natural and supernatural orders. PC, and therefore the regime of Big Brother pushing it, is not about what it supposedly stands for, but is rather fundamentally defined by what it stands against!

robertp> Nice one, denunzio!

woolly liberal cleric

2004-08-31T20:23:00.000+12:00

fisking of an annoying load of crud from stuff.co.nz, 31 August 2004

Gay minister says hardline stance scares her

A gay Hamilton [heretical] church minister [not ministering the Gospel] who supports the Civil Union Bill [a weasel word for gay marriage and redefining marriage in hundreds of pieces of legislation] says the hardline stance [for scandalously daring to identify sin as morally wrong] of people like Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki scares her [because she might be exposed as a fraud for teaching that Christians should abide by woolly liberal notions of compassion above all, discard stuffy old orthodoxy, and hold carnal passions in higher esteem than the Lord their Creator].

Rev Dr Susan Thompson, a minister at St Paul's [ahh you mean St Paul who prohibited homosexual offences] Methodist [revisionist] Church, says loud conservative Christian voices do not represent the majority of Christian opinion [except for the Apostles, Prophets, Church Fathers from ancient times, 1 billion Catholics, and Evangelical denominations exploding across the 3rd World].

"The thing that scares me about Destiny Churches is the absolute certainty [horrible word, absolute, with all its religious overtones] people like Brian Tamaki [successful ,articulate, brown] have that they know what God wants [because God only speaks to liberal academics] and (that) they know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil [what a shocker, a preacher who dares to presume the existence of moral absolutes]. "

Last week, Mr Tamaki organised a march involving 5000 [dont forget obligatory adjectives: fascist hatemongering homophobic bigoted] protesters outside Parliament as a stand against the Civil Unions Bill, which legally recognises same-sex relationships.

She said everyone had the right to voice their own opinions, but found it difficult when someone said everyone must believe what they did [so shut up while we indoctrinate your children with homosexual propaganda].

"I don't particularly want to be a poster child for gay rights [endorsement of sexual anarchy], but I guess I see it as part of my calling as a minister."

Dr Thompson, who recently presented her submission to a Parliamentary select committee on the bill, said she based her opinions on the love and support she had received from her congregation, another congregation in Hamilton and Christians around the country [rather than the witness of orthodoxy, creation, and the Bible].

"I told them (the committee) about my own experience as a Christian minister and a lesbian minister ... I think they were stunned into silence."

Dr Thompson said the Bible was a colourful and deeply spiritual book, but it was written 2000 years ago [actually 66 books by 40 authors on 3 continents spanning 4000 years, all attesting to the one true God] and was a product of its time and context [aren't we all my dear?].

Conservative groups saw the Bible as the literal word of God [funny how it has been instrumental in the conversion of millions of souls] and considered every word an unchanging truth [and God is just an academic theory, religion is just the opiate of the masses], she said.

"I guess I always look at Jesus and his example and see someone who talked about God as love and God as a really radically inclusive love. Jesus talked about a God who welcomed everybody [we will just ignore the bits of the Bible we don't like, such as Genesis 1:27, Leviticus 18:22, Matthew 19:4, Romans 1:18-32, 1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Timothy 1]"

Dr Thompson said she had always been open about being a lesbian and nine months ago fell in love with a Christchurch woman. "People were happy because they could see I was happy," she said. "They celebrated with me and welcomed my partner with warmth and enthusiasm [affirming our disordered state, much like alcoholics together at the pub]"

She said she and her partner had a committed, serious loving relationship. But there was no legal recognition for it [and everybody needs the blessing of the Almighty State rather than the invisible, transcendent God].

She hoped the Civil Union Bill would be passed and said she would love to offer same-sex couples services of blessing [helping them to feel good about ignoring God]

Cashing in on Christian credulity

2004-06-25T13:05:00.000+12:00

It's embarrassing when people are ready to believe pseudoscientific garbage. Evangelical/Fundamental Christians seem particularly susceptible to this. The idea that you belong to a special group of people who hold the secret knowledge can be attractive and feeds the ego.

I believe that the Christian faith is generally a shining beacon of Truth in a dark world. But then you get these snake oil merchants passing through, trying to sell their latest theory of why only they have the 'secret truth', and 300 years of Western science is wrong.

A certain Bob Cornuke, 'adventurer' is in Christchurch this weekend. I think he is going to visit my church. He lays no claim to being a scientist or archaeologist of any standing in the scientific community, yet he purveys outlandish theories of discovering the Ark, Mt Sinai, the altar of the golden calf, etc etc.

I expressed these concerns in an email to the church. Details are in the rest of this article.

-----Original Message-----
From: r p
Sent: Friday, 25 June 2004 11:47
To: 'info@grace.org.nz'
Subject: Bob Cornuke?

Hi
I heard that Mr. Bob Cornuke is visiting Grace this weekend. What services will he speak at?
I am concerned about his teachings: it looks like poor science, and cashing in on people's gullibility.
Here's what "Christianity Today" says about him:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/010/33.36.html
Pseudoarchaeologists
Archaeologists are also raising their profile to take on amateur pretenders who promote bizarre theories on websites or publicize adventures that are more akin to those of 19th-century treasure hunters than 21st-century scientists.
"They make fantastic and sensational claims, like finding chariot wheels in the Red Sea or finding the tablets of the Ten Commandments, or the Ark of the Covenant," says Wood, a member and former vice president of the evangelical Near East Archaeological Society. "They're just sensational claims with absolutely no evidence or basis. But these people get a very large and fanatical following. I encounter [their followers] all the time."
One of the most notorious is the late Ron Wyatt, who claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant in a cave beneath modern Jerusalem.
Another, Bob Cornuke, wrote a book claiming to have identified the real Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia. In his latest book, he says he's discovered the real location where the apostle Paul shipwrecked off Malta.
Cornuke says he's only an investigator, not a real archaeologist. "I investigate the Bible as an investigator would," he says. "I try to find lost locations in the Bible because I really want to inspire people to look at the Word of God as historically true and get inspired to [read it]."
While Cornuke sets himself apart from Wyatt, evangelical archaeologists worry that their unsophisticated, faith-based approach casts a bad light on all who take a professional approach to archaeology and still have a biblical faith. Secular archaeologists tend to lump all literalists, including creation science advocates, with those who believe in ancient astronauts and similar theories.
And yet secular archaeologists sometimes cannot resist cashing in on "fundamentalism." This summer Robert Ballard, who discovered the remains of the Titanic under the waves of the Atlantic in 1985, set off on an underwater expedition to document evidence of Noah's flood in the Black Sea. Ballard received $5 million in funding and lots of publicity for the project.
The Black Sea was originally a freshwater lake that in ancient times became inundated by the salty Mediterranean. Ballard believes this was a cataclysmic event that occurred about 7,500 years ago, and was possibly the deluge described in the Bible and other ancient literature. Skeptics accuse Ballard of using Noah to hype his material for maximum publicity.
"It bugs me a little bit, because I like the Noah story as much as anybody," archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert told USA Today. "I think we shouldn't try and peg what we're doing to either prove or disprove it. We're never going to get there."

A point-by-point critique of Cornuke's theories can be found here:
http://www.ldolphin.org/sinai.html
A few of the points:

PROBLEM 1: The Bible Puts Mt. Sinai in the Sinai
What they mean by "Arabia" is modern Saudi Arabia and there is no statement in the Bible or any other ancient source that places Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia by whatever ancient name (in this case Midian). In fact, it is quite the reverse, Mt. Sinai is clearly placed outside of Saudi Arabia and right on the Sinai Peninsula as we would expect.
Exodus 18:27 states that, while the Israelites were camped near Mt. Sinai,3 Moses sent his Midianite (Saudi Arabian) father-in-law Jethro back to"his own country" of Midian (NIV, emphasis added). Clearly, Mt. Sinai and northwestern Saudi Arabia (Midian) were in two different locations. The making of the statement signals the importance of the action, it was not a trivial event or insignificant journey for Jethro to go back to Midian from Mt. Sinai.

PROBLEM 2: Josephus Puts Mt. Sinai Between Egypt and Arabia
Placing Mt. Sinai somewhere in Arabia is not new, contrary to what has been implied by Williams and Cornuke, but the specification of a particular mountain is relatively recent. The general idea goes back to about 1225 AD, when Muslim geographers began to arbitrarily shift Biblical place names — largely because they had been identified by Christians — from the Sinai to Arabia, as a kind of polemic against the Crusades. But this Mt. Sinai-in-Arabia concept was purely a product of scholarly theories and propaganda, not of long-standing local traditions which often can preserve genuine information about ancient geography and Biblical sites. (10) Nor does not compare in antiquity with the traditions attached to the southern Sinai Peninsula, which can be traced back to about 100 A.D.

PROBLEM 3: The theory of Mt. Sinai-in-Arabia Started as a Muslim Polemic
Nearly 1,700 years ago it was Constantine's devout Christian mother, Empress Helena, ca. 330 A.D., who chose the site for a church. She did not do it to set up a "tourist scam" but for humanitarian reasons -- to build the church to protect monks from murderous raids by nomads. (16) According to the tradition, the church was built at the place where the local monks pointed out what they believed was the Burning Bush. (17) Hence the site was already well known as Mt. Sinai by that time. About 550 A.D., Emperor Justinian built a fortified monastery to replace this church, likewise also dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which still stands today. (18) Much later, the monastery took on the name of St. Catherine, the earliest mentions perhaps about 1244. (19) Contrary to the claim that prior to about 1740 "numerous other mountains were claimed" to be Mt. Sinai, it was not until Lepsius' proposal in 1845 that any other specific mountain but the traditional Jebel Musa was ever suggested for Mt. Sinai. (20) (Earlier, when Muslim scholars arbitrarily placed Mt. Sinai in Arabia, they did not single out a particular mountain.)

PROBLEM NO. 4: Traditional Southern Sinai Site is Ancient
The Williams-Cornuke book is unclear as to when and how the traditional Mt. Sinai was supposedly picked, and this of course has a bearing on how substantial and legitimate a geographic tradition it is. An unnamed "psychic or seer" is said to be responsible for choosing the traditional Sinai site for Emperor Constantine (plate 7 caption of the book). But elsewhere their book says this "myth" has arisen only within the last "almost 250 years" as a long-running "tourist scam," and "prior to that time [about 1740], numerous other mountains were claimed" to be Mt. Sinai though no example is given (pp. 17, 50) and the claim is patently false.

PROBLEM NO. 5: In Paul's Time "Arabia" Included Sinai Peninsula
PROBLEM NO. 6: Too Much Reliance on Strange Methods or Devices
PROBLEM NO. 8: Climate was Wetter in the Past – Sinai Covered in Forests
PROBLEM NO. 11: Melted or Burned Rocks From Jebel al-Lawz are Volcanic
PROBLEM NO. 13: Altar at Mt. Sinai was EARTHEN NOT STONE
The book insists that when Moses built an altar for BURNT OFFERINGS and FELLOWSHIP OFFERINGS, at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24:4) it was made of STONE.
The Bible states that God instructed Moses ON MT. SINAI to make an altar of EARTH, NOT STONE (Exodus 20:24, 24:4), for burnt offerings and fellowship offerings:

The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions the genuine scholarly research and traditions:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14011a.htm

SINAI:
The name is now given to the triangular peninsula lying between the desert of Southern Palestine, the Red Sea, and the gulfs of Akabah and Suez, with an area of about 10,000 square miles, which was the scene of the forty years' wandering of the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt.
The principal topographical features are two. North of the Jabal et-Tih (3200 to 3950 feet) stretches an arid plateau, the desert of Tih, marked by numerous Wadis, notably El-Arish, the "River of Egypt", which formed the southern boundary of the Promised Land (Gen., xv, 18; Num., xxxiv, 5). South of Jabal et-Tih rises a mountainous mass of granite streaked with porphyry, dividing into three principal groups: the western, Jabal Serbal (6750 feet); the central, Jabal Musa (7380 feet), Jabal Catherine (8560 feet), and Jabal Um Schomer (8470 feet); the eastern, Jabal Thebt (7906 feet) and Jabal Tarfa, which terminates in Ras Mohammed. It is among these mountains that Jewish and Christian tradition places the Sinai of the Bible, but the precise location is uncertain. It is Jabal Musa, according to a tradition traceable back to the fourth century, when St. Silvia of Aquitaine was there. Jabal Musa is defended by E.H. and H.S. Palmer, Vigouroux, Lagrange, and others. However, the difficulty of applying Ex., xix, 12, to Jabal Musa and the inscriptions found near Jabal Serbal have led some to favour Serbal. This was the opinion of St. Jerome [...]

Some more resources:
http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/cornuke-mt-sinai.html
http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/index.html
http://www.ldolphin.org/cornukeletter.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/dec03.html (half-way down the page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Sinai
http://www.harkarkom.com/

With warmest regards,
& respect for Science
:o)

your brother in Christ,

r p

Advice for Graham Henry

2004-06-09T14:14:00.000+12:00

In response to my observations:
Unbelievable that the Mighty Cantab Thorne wrecking machines were not selected huh? Good to see Mehrts back where he belongs. Carlos looks like a doofus, as usual.

James writes:

I expected Brad Thorn to get through but I thought Reuben was a goner. I am not so convinced that Graham Henry will be any better than Mitchell and I think he may even be worse as a coach although more successful as a media handler. IF he wins the world cup I shall have to study at the feet of my accomplished master. But I don't know if his strategy will be any better than Mitchells.

What really ticks me off is that not one all black coach that I have seen has yet to work out a strategy for dealing with those teams that can score from you all over the park. I.E. France in its good day and Aussie at the world cup semifinal where they kicked our ass. The answer is simple and will give us a better than even chance of dealing to these teams.

1. Don't give them possession by kicking for touch.
2. Don't give them possession by kicking down field
3. Don't give them possession by putting the grubber through
and ....

4. DON'T FREAKIN GIVE THEM POSSESSION!!!!!

Instead

Run the ball at them
Pick and run from Rucks
Maul it back at them
Fancy dance it back at them

Hold onto the damn pill and stop trying to convince yourself that the other guys don't know how to run with it when they obviously do. What do you think they are going to do when they get the ball. Not even England plays like England used to in the 80's and 90's. Every team in the Big 5 (NZ, Aus, SA, Eng, Fr) can punish you for giving them the pill. Our guys can maul it with the best of them and certainly can ruck it with the best, and if we choose to keep on going forward where the chance of turnover is least i.e. running/mauling the damn thing, then we can slaughter any team under the sun. It is much more physically demanding but then again that stands for the other side too.

As Australia proved in the World Cup against us...

IF you attempt to play SAFE balanced test rugby against a team that is no longer playing by your rules then you are being tactically outsmarted. You are behaving like the General who attempts to fight the next war the way they did in the last. If this was 'Nam then our guys probably would have fragged the guy responsible for the battle plan. To put it (the loss) down to a lack of experience and leadership is to avoid the fact that excellent experienced leaders of elite forces can still get their guys killed through training to fight the last war as opposed to the next one or by refusing to learn the tactical lessons from previous battles.

Change, adapt, overcome, prepare, or else join that list of losers like General Mclelland (Union General, Bull Run, US Civil War), Vercingetorix (Gaulish Chieftain, Alesia, Gaul, Ceasars Campaigns), and Field Marshall Alexander Haig (British, Somme, France, WW1). These guys will go down in history as some of the biggest thicko's to have ever lead men. Not because they didn't have two brain cells to rub together or that their troops were crap but because they didn't know when their tactics were innappropriate and they lacked imagination.

'nuff said

bookwormism

2004-05-18T00:50:00.000+12:00

From WhackingDay, someone's list of "Classic Books". The ones I have read are bold.

1984, George Orwell
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (thanks for the book Sara)
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel (started, but it was dumb)
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen (never! i would only read jane austen under threat of torture. i mean worse torture than reading her. pretty severe torture)
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Holes, Louis Sachar
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Katherine, Anya Seton
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blighton
Magician, Raymond E Feist
The Magus, John Fowles
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Mort, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
On The Road, Jack Kerouac (a mind-blowing experience)
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Stand, Stephen King
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Ulysses, James Joyce (but only if starting it several times and getting a very bad headache and giving up counts)
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Grrr. CUB=country undergoing breakdown.

2004-05-17T22:33:00.000+12:00

Regarding the so-called "Civil Unions Bill" (CUB), I attempted to give Dave the Rave a piece of my mind. I don't think he cares :o\. O well, here's my little bit of wordplay:

Looks like you have bought into the "poor oppressed victim" rhetoric of the proponents of sexual anarchy. I am surprised that as a christian and a father you endorse the deconstruction of marriage. It is the core civil institution of western culture (or any society that lasts longer than 3 generations). Furthermore, there are timeless principles established by the Creator (I hope you are aware of Him) regarding the nature of humanity and the boundaries for sexual behaviour.

The naivete in this discussion does not lie with the Catholic church, rather with your 'enlightened' position, and the position of the Labour party. The Catholic submission to the Bill is a very well reasoned document, with cogent arguments that could only be countered by large amounts of obfuscation and illogic.

Unredeemed humanity is well practised at using excuses, victimhood, and misplaced compassion to justify all manner of sinful behaviour.

Labour's policies for social engineering represent a worldview entirely at odds with the traditions of Western Civilization, and hostile to the wellbeing of New Zealand families.

UPDATE: Comments, copied from old blog

from Dave
Hi Robert, I did care what you had to say. I understand Christianity and I also understand politics. Yet I was a bit confused when you mentioned the Catholic churche's "Submission" to a bill that is not even out yet. You cannot submit to a bill that has not even been written. Your
"submission" is in fact a letter by a group of Catholic Bishops who have not read the bill, nor have they spoken to MPs to find out what is in the bill. Why didn't they read the bill first, or at least get hold of the original private menbers bill as I did?

I do not endorse the deconstruction of marriage. Nor do I endorse statements made in ignorance. In fact the former can contribute to the latter.

Rather than giving a sentence by sentence critique of the Catholic document, I ll just start with the first sentence, and finish with the last sentence

"Legislation that gives relationships other than marriage the same legal consequences as marriage affects the social institution of marriage itself."

ummmm. So why didn't they mention the bill that is going to do this - it's called the Omnibus bill.

"If there is some serious need to regulate other relationships for reasons pertaining to the common good, this should be done in ways that do not institutionalise those relationships or give them social standing; and also in ways that do not impinge upon the paramount rights of children, including a child’s right not to be deprived of either father or mother for the sake of giving legal approbation to some adult choices under ideological pressures."

ummm. That's what the Government is doing. Its called the Omnibus bill. The right of a child to have a mother and a father was discussed in the Care of Children Bill, for which the Catholic church - as I recall - did just a short submission to the select committee..

UPDATE #2
When I was hot under the collar about CUB, I let off steam at Farrar's blog (under the name 'peasant'):
Nazi Comparisons
Hubbard: children killing gays
However I am much more philosophical about the issue these days.

Attack of utter laziness

2004-05-10T19:52:00.000+12:00

I am still alive. A million random events and dilemmas have recently been turning my brain to porridge. I am at work finishing off a complex yet boring project. I gotta stiop being such a perfectionist. I am missing out on a mad church event - open mike night. Never mind. Here's a few of the conundrums and enigmas I have been attempting to make sense of:

the relationship issue, girls are such inscrutable creatures
work has been topsy turvy, considering changing jobs, have plenty on my plate already
my flat was festering, but my good mate Fil came and kindly helped reorganise everything (I almost bailed but had a change of heart)
have had heinous money messes lately, the dentist, credit cards, random trips to Wellington
just bought a new computer, have wasted lots of time on it

Control, you must learn Control, young Jedi

Islam stumbles over Christ

2004-04-04T20:34:00.000+12:00

Listener Letter, mentioned earlier, and my response. The letter purports to be a critique of The Passion but really is a platform for assailing some crucial tenets of the Christian faith.

Almighty God
The Roman occupation of Judaea was often brutal and sometimes nasty -- especially when there was a perceived threat of a nationalist uprising, either political or religious. Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ tells us about the ugliness that usually accompanies conquest, empire and tyranny.

The obscenity in The Passion of the Christ lies in its assumption that this gratituous agony was the best idea the almighty God could come up with, to reconcile Himself with humankind.

The movie gives offence to Jews and Muslims, because it presents a "small" God -- who is constrained to "rules" as to what He can forgive (nothing?), and whom he can forgive (for his "chosen nearly everything, and the unchosen nothing).

Over and over again the Koran proclaims: "God (Allah) is mighty, wise, compassionate, understanding, merciful!" He will forgive as He sees fit, and not according to some theological formula. He does not need a Son to die. He does not need a Son at all. God is great.
A E Thomson
Mt Wellington, Auckland

a) In the Muslim concept of God's nature, He rules absolutely, according to capricious whim, and is not constrained by any Law (might makes right). The Judeo-Christian understanding is of a lawful and just God (might serves right): and justice demands recompense for sins, he does not just let people 'off the hook'.

b) The Passion movie indeed touched on the failings of the Roman Empire. Is this a veiled swipe at the Iraq occupation? The word 'tyranny' aptly describes the murderous regime that preceded the occupation. But this is far from the main point of the movie.

c) The incarnation of Jesus as a mortal man happened to be a wonderful idea: signifying kindness, good will, love, and self-sacrifice in the Creator's heart. Christians are able to relate to the Son of Man on a very human level, for our God is intrinsically a loving person. This is distinct from the remote and incomprehensible Muslim deity: it is apparently not even accurate to think of Allah as a person.

d) I agree that God is is mighty, wise, compassionate, understanding, merciful. That is why it is entirely consistent for Him to send His beloved Son to Earth. Indeed, the Father was separated from the Son, but I am certain that he 'needs' the Son no less than any father needs their son.

Thanks for expressing some of the most popular misunderstandings of the Gospel message! As-salaam alaykum.

St. Paul was correct in his letter to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 1:18
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Maranatha Memories

2004-04-04T20:32:00.000+12:00

This article has been removed. It contained unreliable personal information used without permission. My sincere apologies to anyone affected.

Maranatha Memories, II

2004-04-04T20:30:00.000+12:00

This article has been removed. It contained unreliable personal information used without permission. My sincere apologies to anyone affected.

God's cure for the West

2004-03-30T20:38:00.000+12:00

As outlined earlier, Western society has lost its sense of mission and purpose on Earth. Once, we were granted the honour of carrying the transforming Gospel message to the lost world. Now, by a gradual shift of public morality, Christian norms are hard to find, and the great European nations that produced some of the most elevated and noble works of art and culture, retreat in the moral decline evident everywhere.
Although we have neglected the charge of taking up the Gospel message, hope is not lost. There are great prophetic promises for those nations who respond to the call of the Spirit, and forsake their selfish pursuit of worldly wealth, pleasure and prestige. In the early 1900's Wales was in a dark time, but this was completely swept away by the greatest revival in recent times. Should the Lord so desire, it is an easy thing for Him to send revival again.

While the moral decline in the West deepens, the Christian Church continues to grow:
The Unfinished Task, at JoshuaProject.net
How God Saved Civilization, at JimGarlow.com
Global Gospel: Christianity Alive & Well in the Southern Hemisphere, at religion-online.org
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

Quick roundup, more later, maybe

2004-03-29T21:03:00.000+12:00

* Bic Runga tars Christchurch 'racist' - hope she refunds all the CDs we bought. A stray remark from a bloke in a pub and suddenly the whole city is a seething hotbed of racial turmoil. Has she heard of Bosnia, Zimbabwe, or Israel. Racial tribalism is a human universal. Not that I wish to defend it - just pointing out that racism is practically nil in CHC. At least NZ seems able to hold a racial debate with some civility (after much cajoling from Don Brash).

* in a Listener letter: some muslim dude pokes the passion and deity of Christ a) would I be allowed to deny Mohammed in a Muslim country? b) I hope the dear old listener allows a debate on the comparative merits of each religion c) I would rather worship and serve Jesus Christ any day; being human and created in the image of God is a great honour d) How does the Passion detract from God's glory? After a mere 33 years of humility, Jesus carried the sins of the world, conquered death, and now reigns in resurrected glory. Faith in Jesus has been the motivator of immeasurable good in the world.

* in the sunday star times: some lefty professors label maxim conference 'racist' by virtue of the fact that kkk members allegedly went to listen to speakers in the usa a) they made no attempt whatever to address any argument made by maxim, they just resorted to ad hominem b) by their logic, would the maxim speakers be magically sanctified lefties if the profs attended the conference?
OK, I concede they did complain about the theme of 'Political Correctness': ie. that this label is uncharitably applied to social welfare policies that aid the unfortunate. But this also fails to address the issue at hand: the attempts by radical social engineers to redefine language, and stifle debate. In fact the good professors themselves exemplify the problem that Maxim seeks to counter, judging by their polemic and irrelevant letter.

* an incoherent listener article devoted to making NZ a totalitarian communist republic owned by multinational corporations
i will expand on these soon. stoopid news media!

Welcome to Neverland

2004-03-29T20:39:00.000+12:00

Western culture has lost its moral compass. Youth and consumerism are the new social ideals. The liberal elites seek to become further entrenched by balkanizing the populace with mass immigration and the victim culture, or bribing them with the allurement of absolute sexual autonomy, supposedly without responsibility. Traditional values, which formed the foundation of the civilization we so thoughtlessly 'modernize', have become ever more marginalized.
Cult of youth spells end of Western civilization
Learning to Love - myths, pressures, opportunities
The Moral Dilemma of the West
Civilization is the blossoming then withering of a communal intelligence
The Decline of Intellect
Western Civilization - Supreme or Decaying?
Western creed: western identity
The Erosion of the Social Link in the Economically Advanced Countries
The Rise of Relativism and the Decline of Virtue and Freedom in America
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
Capitalism and the Suicide of Culture
The Decline of a Nation
What Makes Western Culture Unique?
Does Humanity Stand a Chance?
The Tyranny of Liberalism

But wait! Hope remains:
Culture Wars - Discussion and Resources
On to Restoration!
Right & Wrong : A Case For Moral Absolutes
Prophecy for USA: 1931 Redux
The Ancient Paths [Olam] ancient, universal, timeless truths: universal ways of God that simply make life work when we walk in them.
Jeremiah 6:16This is what the LORD says:
"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, 'We will not walk in it.'

Wishlist time!

2004-03-25T21:27:00.000+12:00

Right, since other people seem to be doing it, I thought I would create my Amazon Wish List. It's nice to dream. I know, greed is a deadly sin!
[note: I love the way that blogging organizes my thoughts - never mind about the rest of my life].

The Ultimate Garage

McLaren F1
Jaguar XJ
BMW Mini Cooper S
Holden Monaro
Porsche 911 Targa
Hummer SUV
Harley-Davidson cruiser
Quad bike
Massey-Ferguson tractor
Haines Hunter (a superyacht won't fit in the garage)
Ford Model T (for special occasions

Realistic Garage

Ford Telstar 2500cc V6 w/ mags (yes! I got it)
Malibu Longboard
Twin Kayak
Snow Skis & accessories

Stuff that Amazon cannot supply

DVD: The Passion
DVD: Mystic River

Pungent analysis from SockThief

2004-03-24T21:35:00.000+12:00

Please excuse the mindless link propagation - there are so many great resources out there!

In his article: More pushing of barrows, SockThief points out (yet again) the anti-science stance of Left/Liberal political elites. They tend to deny the fundamentals of human nature in order to further their utopian visions.

A voice in the wilderness, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate offers a sound, scientific approach for liberal politicians to address the human condition. Their response is to dismiss his arguments with a prophylactic separation between their political ideas and the scientific enterprise. I think there is a distinct gap between their idealizations and reality.
For interest, here is a copy of Brown's list of Human Universals:

Barger's 'evolutionary' sort order:

environment, adjustments to
binary cognitive distinctions
pain
likes and dislikes
food preferences
making comparisons

time
time, cyclicity of
memory
anticipation
habituation
choice making (choosing alternatives)
intention
ambivalence
emotions
self-control
fears
fear of death
fears, ability to overcome some
risk-taking

daily routines
rituals

sexual attraction
sexual attractiveness
sex differences in spatial cognition and behavior

mental maps
territoriality
conflict

self distinguished from other

sweets preferred
tabooed foods

childbirth customs
childcare
females do more direct childcare
preference for own children and close kin (nepotism)
weaning
childhood fears
childhood fear of loud noises
childhood fear of strangers
pretend play
play
toys, playthings
play to perfect skills
practice to improve skills
husband older than wife on average

sexual regulation includes incest prevention
incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed
incest, prevention or avoidance

hygienic care

family (or household)
biological mother and social mother normally the same person
attachment
mourning
affection expressed and felt
gestures
empathy
food sharing
turn-taking
group living

sexual jealousy

kin, close distinguished from distant
kin groups
kinship statuses

anthropomorphization
interest in bioforms (living things or things that resemble them)
critical learning periods

murder proscribed

males dominate public/political realm
males engage in more coalitional violence
males more aggressive
males more prone to lethal violence
males more prone to theft
males, on average, travel greater distances over lifetime

dreams
symbolism

social structure
dominance/submission
leaders
cooperation
coalitions
collective identities
conflict, means of dealing with
conflict, mediation of
decision making, collective
good and bad distinguished
distinguishing right and wrong
judging others
fairness (equity), concept of
economic inequalities
economic inequalities, consciousness of
envy
envy, symbolic means of coping with
etiquette
insulting
interpreting behavior reciprocity, negative (revenge, retaliation)
redress of wrongs
resistance to abuse of power, to dominance
rape
rape proscribed

pride

taboos

rites of passage

cultural variability

dispersed groups
visiting

sickness and death seen as related
healing the sick (or attempting to)
medicine
sucking wounds

snakes, wariness around

sexual modesty
copulation normally conducted in privacy

diurnality

thumb sucking

tickling

property
materialism
prestige inequalities
trade

tools
tool dependency
tool making
tools patterned culturally
tools, permament
tools for pounding

weapons

lever

directions, giving of

aesthetics

customary greetings

generosity admired
gift giving
stinginess, disapproval of

self-image, awareness of (concern for what others think)
self-image, manipulation of
manipulate social relations
self-image, wanted to be positive
self is responsible
shame
psychological defense mechanisms

shelter
nonbodily decorative art

right-handedness as population norm

onomatopoeia

fire

spear
tools for cutting

death rituals

body adornment
hairstyles

containers
tying material (ie, something like string)
intertwining (eg, weaving)

measuring

cooking

tools to make tools

music
music related in part to dance
music related in part to religious activity
music seen as art (a creation)
music, vocal
musical redundancy
musical repetition
musical variation
melody
rhythm

dance

not yet sorted:

actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control

conjectural reasoning

continua (ordering as cognitive pattern)

corporate (perpetual) statuses

coyness display

crying

culture

decision making

differential valuations

entification (treating patterns and relations as things)

ethnocentrism

feasting

government

groups that are not based on family

hope

hospitality

identity, collective

imagery

in-group distinguished from out-group(s)

in-group biases in favor of

institutions (organized co-activities)

interpolation

jokes

logical notions
logical notion of 'and'
logical notion of 'equivalent'
logical notion of 'general/particular'
logical notion of 'not'
logical notion of 'opposite'
logical notion of 'part/whole'
logical notion of 'same'

magic
magic to increase life
magic to sustain life
magic to win love
weather control (attempts to)

marriage

meal times

mentalese

mood- or consciousness-altering techniques and/or substances

moral sentiments

moral sentiments, limited effective range of

normal distinguished from abnormal states

Oedipus complex

past/present/future

planning

planning for future

possessive, intimate

possessive, loose

role and personality seen in dynamic interrelationship (ie, departures from role can be explained in terms of individual personality)

sanctions

sanctions for crimes against the collectivity

sanctions include removal from the social unit

self as neither wholly passive nor wholly autonomous

self as subject and object

senses unified

socialization

socialization expected from senior kin

socialization includes toilet training

statuses and roles

statuses, ascribed and achieved

statuses distinguished from individuals

succession

triangular awareness (assessing relationships among the self and two other people)

violence, some forms of proscribed

clusters:

semantic components, sex
sex (gender) terminology is fundamentally binary
sex statuses
sexual regulation
sexuality as focus of interest
statuses on other than sex, age, or kinship bases

numerals (counting)
one (numeral)
phonemes, range from 10 to 70 in number
pronouns, minimum two numbers
two (numeral)

black (color term)
white (color term)

cooperative labor
division of labor
division of labor by age
reciprocal exchanges (of labor, goods, or services)
division of labor by sex

age grades
age statuses
age terms

male and female and adult and child seen as having different natures
mother normally has consort during child-rearing years
music, children's
baby talk

belief in supernatural/religion
beliefs, false
beliefs about death
beliefs about disease
beliefs about fortune and misfortune

classification
classification of age
classification of behavioral propensities
classification of body parts
classification of fauna
classification of flora
classification of inner states
classification of kin
classification of space
classification of tools
classification of weather conditions
nomenclature (perhaps the same as classification)
classification of sex
classification of colors

face (word for)
facial communication
facial expression of anger
facial expression of contempt
facial expression of disgust
facial expression of fear
facial expression of happiness
facial expression of surprise
facial expressions, masking/modifying of
oligarchy (de facto)
recognition of individuals by face

abstraction in speech & thought
discrepancies between speech, thought, and action
figurative speech
music, vocal, includes speech forms
special speech for special occasions
stop/nonstop contrasts (in speech sounds)
symbolic speech

antonyms
conflict, consultation to deal with
contrasting marked and nonmarked sememes (meaningful elements in language)
culture/nature distinction
divination
dream interpretation
explanation
father and mother, separate kin terms for
folklore
future, attempts to predict
gossip
grammar
hand (word for)
inheritance rules
insulting
jokes
kin terms translatable by basic relations of procreation
language
language employed to manipulate others
language employed to misinform or mislead
language is translatable
language not a simple reflection of reality
language, prestige from proficient use of
law (rights and obligations)
law (rules of membership)
linguistic redundancy
marking at phonemic, syntactic, and lexical levels
meaning, most units of are non-universal
metaphor
metonym
morphemes
myths
narrative
nouns
overestimating objectivity of thought
person, concept of
personal names
phonemes
phonemes defined by set of minimally constrasting features
phonemes, merging of
phonemic change, inevitability of
phonemic change, rules of
phonemic system
poetry/rhetoric
poetic line, uniform length range
poetic lines characterized by repetition and variation
poetic lines demarcated by pauses
polysemy (one word has several meanings)
precedence, concept of (that's how the leopard got its spots)
private inner life
promise
pronouns
pronouns, minimum three persons
proper names
proverbs, sayings
proverbs, sayings - in mutually contradictory forms
semantics
semantic category of affecting things and people
semantic category of dimension
semantic category of giving
semantic category of location
semantic category of motion
semantic category of other physical properties
semantic components
semantic components, generation
sememes, commonly used ones are short, infrequently used ones are longer
synesthetic metaphors
synonyms
tabooed utterances
taxonomy
true and false distinguished
units of time
verbs
vocalic/nonvocalic contrasts in phonemes
vowel contrasts
world view

Amazing pic: europe sunset

2004-03-24T21:33:00.000+12:00

This arrived via email today, as a PowerPoint attachment. Sadly it's an urban myth, claiming to be from the last flight of the ill-fated Columbia. The original is at NASA's APOD.
More cool images of New Zealand!

Pathetic pundits pan 'The Passion'

2004-03-20T21:52:00.000+13:00

Gertrude Himmelfarb of the Washington Post has criticized The Passion of the Christ without seeing it. Her attack is basically that the movie is an act of social irresponsibility. She offers a couple "how would you feel" thought experiments. The excellent response of David Heddle is:
On a stupidity scale of 1 to Bishop Spong, this argument is way up there. It compares a film about what is regarded as the defining moment of God's redemptive work with human tragedies borne of men, not God.
Nevertheless, the answer is simple: I would not rant and rave like those who are screaming that Gibson’s movie is anti-Semitic, revealing nothing so much as their own anti-Christian bigotry.

To claim that this movie is socially irresponsible etc. is a grand case of a person with a plank in their eye, trying to remove a speck from Mel Gibson's eye. Where was the outrage at Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, Romper Stomper, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting for daring to profit from portraying casual violence and explicit drug use? These egregious films could promote murder and hard drugs!

Where was the outrage at The Heist, Oceans Eleven, and the Italian Job for glorifying theft of enough wealth to ruin hundreds of people? It might cause more bank robberies! Where was the outrage over It's a Beautiful Life, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan, for an unsympathetic portrayal of the German race? It might promote anti-Aryanism!

Where *IS* the outrage from educated women over the multi billion dollar industry that is pornography, flooding the West, that degrades and objectifies women, attacks self-esteem, promotes promiscuity, destroys the concept of filial love, and is the favoured entertainment for rapists around the world!??!!

"Hypocrite" is a word often slung at Christians who fall, as humans are given to do. However in this case it seems to me that many journalists are also worthy of the title. Journalists love to take the moral high ground, especially when it comes to the Christian faith.

There's really not much room up there, this guy hanging on a cross seems to have the pre-eminent position.

Stuff the media has not publicised: here and here. God bless.

Visit to an Anglican church

2004-03-18T22:04:00.000+13:00

On Monday I finally got around to partaking in a communion service at the stately old Anglican church just across the road from work. Powerful is the only word to describe it. The symbolism, ritual, and evident reverence for the sacredness of the communion elements spoke directly to my soul. I got a sense of the magnitude of Jesus' sacrifice on *my* behalf. OK, so the church holds some liberal type views which I consider flaky, but clearly the Lord is there. It is so different to the totally casual, laid-back style of my home church. These people really seem to hold God in awe, respect, and reverence. In my pursuit of intimacy with Christ, I have been guilty of somehow relating to him on just a human level, forgetting His sovereignty, glory, and holiness. I am going back: I need more of the sacred in my life.

anti Passion prejudice

2004-03-07T22:07:00.000+13:00

This Christ-denying generation has politically crucified Mel Gibson for daring to speak the truth in 'The Passion'. Jesus Himself is the Word of God. As in the Gospels he brings a sword, so that those who belong to him are set apart.

An article from ChristianityToday, entitled the Passion and the prejudice reveals a concerted effort to suppress the film, for no logical reason.

Author of a NYTimes article had personal motivation to write an article hostile to Mel Gibson's father

this led to exaggerated speculation that Mel Gibson was a Holocaust-denier and anti-Semite

the Jewish Anti-Defamation League made premature judgements of the film before anybody had seen it, based on an unauthorized version of the screenplay

"The Jewish Week" magazine also hysterically announced 'Jews horrified by Gibson's film'

and on and on ..
My take on all this is that nothing sells papers like a good controversy. Most media seem to delight in anything that denigrates the person of Christ and the veracity of His claims.

Nonetheless, the good old Christchurch Press (Fri, March 4, 2004) an article on page B6, 'Who really killed Jesus Christ?', that identifies the Roman authorities as equally complicit with the Jewish priesthood, in Jesus' crucifixion.

It also reminds us that the Catholic Church absolved Jews of particular responsibility for the death of Christ, as early a the Council of Trent in 1570, again in the 1960s declaration of Nostra Aetate, and again in John Paul the second's Vatican II.
Quote:

Gibson accepts the Christian consensus that the crucifixion was the fault of all mankind. To emphasise this, he is reported to have filmed his own hand hammering in the nails.

There is one other factor, however. Christians believe that Jesus died to "save us all". This prompts the question that, as his work of salvation had to involve his death, was he consciously responsible for his own fate?

According to the theologian JG Davies, Jesus understood his mission "as necessarily involving a vocation to suffering and death".

Or to put it more bluntly, if there was a Jew who killed Jesus, was it Jesus himself? [--Sunday Times]

After seeing the movie for myself, it is clear to me that Jesus humbly allowed himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. But this did not constitute suicide as the final comment seemed to imply: rather, it was in faithful obedience to God the Father and love for humanity, that Jesus made the greatest sacrifice. This is borne out by his words to the thief crucified next to him: 'Truly, this day you will be with me in Paradise.'

Jesus knew what he was doing. And He is Risen indeed!

Funky "Passion" Facts

2004-02-26T22:09:00.000+13:00

Here are some choice quotes from NewsMax.com:

Gibson: "Passion" Sprung from Suicide Thoughts
In a revealing interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer [...] on "Primetime," Gibson explained that for him the making of the controversial film was cathartic, that he set out to make it over 10 years ago because he had reached "the height of spiritual bankruptcy". The Hollywood star admits that things got so bad he once contemplated suicide by hurling himself out a window.

"I just didn't want to go on," he confided to Sawyer. "I was looking down thinking, 'Man, this is just easier this way. You have to be mad, you have to be insane, to despair in that way. But that is the height of spiritual bankruptcy. There's nothing left."

Instead, he said he turned back to the word of God. "I think I just hit my knees. "I just said, 'Help.' You know? And then, I began to meditate on it, and that's in the Gospel. I read all those again. I remember reading bits of them when I was younger. Pain is the precursor to change, which is great," Gibson said. "That's the good news."

He recalled that the "spiritual bankruptcy" led him to reexamine Christianity, and ultimately to create "The Passion of the Christ" - "my vision . with God's help" of the final hours in the life of Jesus.

Gibson: God Sent Me 'Signs' to Make 'Passion'
It was a sign from heaven that inspired him to make "The Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson has revealed. The sign: A complete stranger approached him several years ago. Out of nowhere the stranger, a French woman, walked up to him and said, "Jesus loves you". "There were signals like this all over the place," the New York Daily News reports Gibson recalling in a documentary about the making of the film [...]

James Caviezel, who plays Christ, said he got an equally eerie sign six months before he auditioned for the role of Christ when another stranger came up to him and said, "You'll be playing Jesus."According to the News, Caviezel noted that his initials are J.C. and that he was 33 – the same age as Jesus when he was killed.

Mel Gibson's 'Christ' Reveals Crucifixion
After being struck by lightning, the main character, James Caviezel, said "I was lit up like a Christmas tree, [...] It felt as if I had two hands slapping my head and all of a sudden I had 200 extras scurrying. I had no idea what happened. All I was seeing was pink and a kind of a fuzzy static in front of my eyes."

Caviezel said that when one of the crew came over to check if he was OK, he was struck by lightning, too. Asked if he thought the lightning strike was "a sign from God," Caviezel told Hannity, "I think the whole thing has been that way." Noting "the amount of conversions on the movie," he said the experience of filming Christ's story "really changed people's lives."

Caviezel recalled telling Gibson, "I think it's very important that we have mass every day - at least I need that to play this guy. I felt if I was going to play him I needed [the sacrament] in me. So [Gibson] provided that."

At the same time, Caviezel said, Gibson went out of his way to be "very respectful to people like Maya Morgenstern, who's Jewish and whose parent was a Holocaust survivor." Morgenstern plays the Virgin Mary in the film. He defended "Passion" against charges by critics that the film encourages anti-Semitism, stressing that it offers sympathetic portrayals of Mary, the Apostles and other Jewish figures.

"There's no broad brush applied here to any particular group, [...] This film does not play the blame game. We are all culpable for the death of Christ," added the film's star. "My sins, your sins put him on that cross."

Most offensive, greatest tribute
Any movie telling an accurate account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will and must elicit a stinging rebuke from the world. Anybody can make a film about a great guy named Jesus, an itinerate carpenter-teacher humbly dispensing words of wisdom just like Buddha, Confucius and the Dalai Lama – nobody gets offended, everybody’s happy. However, no other recognised spiritual leader in history has claimed deity, nor have they been killed and brought back to life. Jesus drew a line in the sand between Himself and all past and future “spiritual leaders.”

Jesus Himself said His message would put His followers on one side of the line and all other humanity on the other. Jesus claimed to be the only way to God the Father – He alone is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

In “The Passion of the Christ” Jesus is clearly shown as the Son of God. And unlike many movies that end with Jesus on the cross, this one, in the last brief scene, shows Christ in His tomb resurrected in the promised victory over death. No wonder that, because of unbelief, this could well be the single most offensive movie ever made. At the same time, it could also become the finest and greatest tribute to Jesus Christ we have ever seen on the screen.

About 'The Passion'

2004-02-25T22:13:00.000+13:00

Of course, I can't wait to see it. I have heard some interesting stories about the making of the movie. You know how on the sets of diabolical movies such as 'the Omen' or 'the Crow', scary things happen and people are hurt or killed? Well the converse is true for 'the Passion'. In an interview at NewsMax.com, James Caviezel, the actor portraying Jesus talks about being struck by lightning in the crucifixion scene! Also, by the Lord's grace, there were many conversions!
Michael Gove of timesonline.co.uk (pricey subscription site) writes an enticingly accurate blurb thus:

Hollywood indulges every passion save for one
"There is one sure way to put yourself beyond the pale in Hollywood — make a film in which the central elements of the Christian faith are treated truly, without irony, subversion or mockery."

And not forgetting my daily favourite, ChristianityToday has a massive collection of great articles.

God has been good to me

2004-02-24T22:18:00.000+13:00

I love God. He was so kind to me last weekend. The reason I am on cloud 9 is because I did an 'Ancient Paths' seminar at my church. God really used this special time, I felt like my heart, mind and spirit were getting a good overhaul and clean out. The work of the Holy Spirit was supported by a lot of prayer, there was a tangible sense of grace the whole weekend.
It was a revelatory experience to see more clearly just how terribly far our society has strayed from these Ancient Paths. The course takes its name from a Hebrew word Olam denoting ancient, universal, timeless truths. Or, putting it another way, universal ways of God that simply make life work when we walk in them. Olam comes from Jeremiah 6:13-16:

¹⁶This is what the LORD says:
"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, 'We will not walk in it.'

Chapter 1 of Craig Hill's insightful book is in the remainder of this post.

One day while reading through my Bible, my attention was drawn to the following peculiar scripture as being important:

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you shall find rest for your souls.’ But they said, `We will not walk in it.’”
Jeremiah 6:16

As I began meditating on this verse, I wondered what the Lord meant by “the ancient paths”. Here we are directed to ask for the “ancient paths”. The first thing I did in my investigation of the passage was to look up the Hebrew word for “ancient” to discover its meanings. I found that the Hebrew word is “OLAM”. Some of the meanings of this Hebrew word are: old, concealed, hidden, perpetual, eternal, timeless, from eternity.[i]

When I read the words “from eternity”, something inside me jumped, and I remembered reading in the Bible how everything on the earth is patterned after things in heaven. The things on the earth are really just types and shadows of the things in heaven. God's ways are heavenly, eternal, timeless. Before God created man or the earth, His ways were established, and He walked in them. When God created Adam and Eve, He made them in His own image and established within them His ways: supernatural, timeless, from eternity. These were ways of thinking, ways of speaking, ways of behaving and relating to one another. Since man chose sin, he has departed farther and farther from these ways. Today we don’t even recognize what “these ways” are any more, so we couldn't return to them if we wanted to do so.

Nevertheless, God instructs us through the prophet Jeremiah to see and ask for the “ancient paths” again. He tells us that they are the “good way.” The Hebrew word for “GOOD” used in this passage is the word “TOV.” Some of the meanings of this word are: pleasant, agreeable, happy, well-off, prosperous, great, excellent, cheerful, merry, distinguished[ii]. Such characteristics are the result of walking in the ancient paths of God. This scripture passage further says that when you walk in these paths, you will find rest for your soul. So many people today have very little rest or peace on the inside. Life is a constant struggle, and there is a continual torment on the inside of many. God never intended for us to have to live this way. Such a state is not walking in “the ancient paths.”

When God created man and placed him on the earth, He made him in His own image and programmed him with His own ways. Since that time, man has departed farther and farther from the original ways of God. Even after sin entered the world, man still lived 900 years. By the time of Noah the life span of man had already decreased to around 600 years, while in Moses' day men lived only 120 years. Today the average life span is about only 80 years. The farther away from the original ways of God man has departed, the shorter his life span has become, and the more complicated he has made his own life.

SUPERNATURAL POWER JUMP

As I continued to meditate upon this passage of scripture from Jeremiah, the Lord reminded me of a physical principle which I had once studied in a college physics class. Everyone knows that the high tension power lines that stretch across our country carry high voltage electricity. Electrical power from these lines can be accessed by physically connecting a conductive wire to these lines. However, few people know that electrical power can be induced in a conductor wire that is simply stretched parallel to an active electric line without the conductor wire's touching the line or being physically connected to it in any way. By simply being stretched parallel to a set of electric lines, a copper wire may conduct electric power right through the air with no physical connection whatsoever. On the other hand, a copper wire stretched perpendicular to electric lines will not conduct any power at all. Electrical power line workers have been electrocuted when not understanding this vital principle.

Even as electrical power jumps across free air to a parallel conductor wire, so God’s supernatural power and life can jump from Him to you when your ways are lined up parallel to His ways. The only problem is that we don’t know what God’s ways are so that we might line up our lives parallel with them.

God originally established His ways in culture so that they would be imparted naturally from one generation to the next. In my study of several different cultures of the world, I have concluded that God has established a significant deposit of His eternal ways within virtually every culture of the world. When God’s ways are established within any given culture, there is no need for a specific intellectual knowledge of these ways. However, when God’s ways are systematically eliminated from a given culture over a few generations, then the people within that culture “perish for lack of such knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)

In our North American culture, over the last several generations, people have decided that we don't have to think, behave, or do things “that way” any more, so that now we honestly don’t know what “that way” is. Consequently, the Lord admonishes us: When we once again find God’s ancient ways and begin to line up our lives and families accordingly, we will begin to experience a supernatural jump of God’s life and power into our lives.

SUPERFICIAL HEALING

“For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain, and from the prophet even to the priest everyone deals falsely. And they have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying, `Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; they did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be cast down,” says the Lord. Thus says the Lord, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you shall find rest for your souls. But they said, `We will not walk in it.’”
Jeremiah 6:13-16

These verses, immediately preceding verse 16 of Jeremiah 6, give us some further insight into our present experience of life here in North America. Because we have not walked in God's ancient paths, many areas of our society, as well as personal and family life, seem almost overwhelming on a daily basis. Consequently, important spiritual, emotional, financial, family, and health needs seem to go unmet day after day. As a result, as verse 13 tells us, we become very self-focused and greedy after gain. When his/her needs go unmet, a person tends to become selfish and greedy. It is impossible to tell a drowning man not to be so greedy for air, or a starving man not to steal for food. As verse 13 tells us, greed and deceit are bound to operate when crucial needs go unmet.

Verse 14 states that we are not helping people when we, the church, attempt to bring healing to the brokenness of people in a superficial way. Perhaps we have thought we were helping people through speaking “peace, peace”, thus attempting to remove their guilt and pain without dealing with the root causes of their problems.

People in the 1990’s are interested in instant solutions to problems. I have often thought that a drive-through church would probably be very popular. I could see people pulling up to the drive-through window on Sunday morning and ordering: “one order of McHealing, three McSalvations, two McDeliverances and one McSermon to go, please.” We are an impatient society which, by and large, is unwilling to deal with root causes of problems; we want only instant pain alleviation. As a result, many times we go through life daily making choices aimed at just eliminating the painful consequences of our last foolish choice. We rarely look far enough ahead to see the longer-term consequences of the choices we make.

SHORT-TERM FIXES ARE ALWAYS THE SEED OF LONG-TERM DESTRUCTION.

Suppose a teenage girl who has been deeply wounded and alienated from her father enters into rebellion and cuts off relationship with him. She has now stepped outside the circle of spiritual protection which God designed in the family for her safety. Having been deeply wounded and hurt by her father, the young girl now goes out in search of love. Suppose she meets a young man who says that he loves her. Because of the hurt and need in her life, she allows herself to become sexually involved with him, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Unfortunately, her second, foolish, short-term choice of sexual satisfaction has resulted in a longer term consequence. Pressured by an unwanted pregnancy, this young woman makes a third, foolish, short-term choice by deciding to abort her baby. This action results in the long-term consequence of untold guilt and shame at having taken a life. The torment and hurt of this situation then result in a new quest for comfort and love. Another romantic relationship is entered, and again an unwanted pregnancy occurs. However, still carrying the tormenting guilt and hurt from the previous abortion, the young woman chooses this time to have her baby. She begins to pressure the father to marry her, and eventually he does.

Each choice that this young woman makes is designed to attempt only to remove the pressure of the consequence of the last short-sighted choice. After only a little time of being married, the young woman discovers that the man she has married is full of anger and very abusive. As a result, after a year she chooses to divorce her husband. Still carrying tremendous hurt and pain from the rejection from her father, the abortion, the second unwanted pregnancy, the abuse of her husband, and now the divorce, she once again sets out on a quest for love and comfort. You can probably play out the rest of the scenario yourself in a string of broken relationships and devastatingly painful events.

Verse 15 of Jeremiah chapter 6 tells us that when we make short-sighted choices attempting to bring peace without dealing with the roots of the former wrong choices, we harden our own hearts and are not even convicted of any wrongdoing. Jeremiah says that when men do this, they don’t even know how to blush. This hardening of heart then becomes the very cause for their downfall and destruction. This is why Jeremiah in verse 16 urges us to seek after and ask for the “ancient paths” where the “good way” is.

MERCEDES VS. MACHETE

“But they will say, `It's hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’ Therefore thus says the Lord, `Ask now among the nations, who ever heard the like of this? The virgin of Israel has done a most appalling thing. Does the snow of Lebanon forsake the rock of the open country? Or is the cold flowing water from a foreign land ever snatched away? For My people have forgotten Me. They burn incense to worthless gods and they have stumbled from their ways, from the ancient paths to walk in bypaths, not on a highway,”
Jeremiah 18:12-15.

In this passage, Jeremiah is again urging us to return to the ways of God. He states that forgetting God is as foolhardy as turning away from the only source of fresh water in a desert land. In verse 15 the prophet tells us that when we don't walk in God’s “ancient paths”, we are walking in “bypaths.” When I first read this passage, I could picture a man attempting to cut his way through a thick jungle with a machete in order to get from point A to point B. The distance was quite vast, and it looked as though it might take the man most of his life to progress to the goal.

On the other hand, verse 15 says that the “ancient paths” are like a super expressway. I could picture another man also moving from point A to point B. However, rather than hacking his way through a jungle with a machete, he was riding in a Mercedes Benz on a super highway. The second man in the Mercedes was able to reach in one day the same goal that it took the first man with the machete all his lifetime to reach. If we will just stand in the way, see and ask for the “ancient paths,” and begin to walk in them again, I believe that we will find ourselves riding on a highway instead of slowly cutting a path through the jungle in many areas of our lives and society. Daniel 11:32 tells us: “But the people who know their God will be strong and do exploits.”

Most of us have not had any time to do any exploits, because we are caught up in a survival mode. When we have to spend most of our time cutting through underbrush and fending off wild beasts, we have no time to do anything other than just survive.

When thinking of evangelism and expanding the Kingdom of God, I had always heard that each generation is responsible to evangelize its own generation. As I pondered this one day, I began to wonder who is responsible to evangelize my children and grandchildren. Of course, I concluded that this also is my responsibility. However, over the last couple of generations we have had to evangelize in each generation the children of the previous generation of Christians. We have had to set up coffee houses and street ministries to win back to the Lord the children of Christians. Why? We have thought that if we just take our kids to church, pray for them, teach them the Bible, or even put them in a Christian school, then they will grow up to serve the Lord. However, experience has proven to us that although all these things are valuable, in and of themselves, they do not adequately set the course for life.

What then is necessary to set a course in the lives of Christian young people which results in their serving Jesus Christ all the days of their lives? I believe that the answer to this question has to do with an impartation of two key qualities from the Lord at crucial times in life. In every culture God established His ancient ways of instilling these key qualities at important times in the lives of children. However, in our culture here in North America, we have forsaken and forgotten God’s ancient ways and, as a result, have failed to receive in our own lives or to impart to our children these two key qualities.

Walking in God’s ancient ways results in generational evangelism. Each generation is responsible not only to evangelize its own generation, but really to evangelize at least two generations ahead. If we again rediscover God’s “ancient paths” and begin to walk in them, we will virtually ensure that our children and grandchildren will serve Jesus Christ all the days of their lives.

Let us now move on to examine the two key qualities which God intended to impart and establish powerfully in each of our lives: IDENTITY AND DESTINY.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] James Strong, "The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible," Abingdon Press, New York 1890.
[ii] IBID.
Order The Ancient Paths

Listener gets a lesson

2004-02-11T22:36:00.000+13:00

NZ's beloved Listener generally espouses a new-age, liberal, Lloyd Geering woolly view of Christianity. This typical media ignorance is nicely punctured with this letter to the editor (not available on their site), printed in issue 3323:

Philip Matthews writes of Bishop Holloway's Doubts and Loves making a "valuable and persuasive effort to salvage something useful from the wreckage of Christendom in decline".
I am compelled to write that the church, far from being in decline, is growing at what liberals might consider to be an astonishing rate. Every year, more than the population of New Zealand convert to Christianity in China, not to mention the phenomenal growth throughout the rest of the world.
It would be fair to say that views held by liberal theologians do not form the basis or even the backdrop of the faith inherent in the Church. Such issues that dilute the very authenticity of Jesus are not going to lead anyone to trust in Him, let alone lead lives that recognise the authority of God the creator. God is - believe it or not - and is attested to by every sign, wonder, and miracle witnessed by people who saw Jesus in action 2000 years ago. Christianity is no dated and ridiculous religion and, far from being fossilised, gives life and the only hope to a perishing world.
Like any member of society, homosexuals have the same opportunity and right to find this life without struggling their way through drivel dressed as "multi-faceted truth". True love demonstrates truth, not some wobbly inclusiveness at all costs. Lives are changed, not simply affirmed and made excuses for.
Life confronts us constantly with issues that need resolving. It is decidedly unhealthy to live in a state of constant uncertainty, especially in issues relating to life and death. Here lies no faith befitting any man and God does not expect it of us. The debate is in the courts of political and humanistic expediency and has nothing to do with revealed truth.
David Griffiths, Hamilton

Also published in the pink pages of the Listener, (p.10 actually, same issue under the heading Church Stands):

I can understand what all the fuss is about concerning homosexual clergy ordination in the Anglican Church ("At the cross roads", December 20). But let us place all this in its right perspective. God does not hate homosexuals as such: just the practice of same-sex sexual intercourse. He also hates drunkenness, hatred and jealousy, to name but a few. "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy; fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. And I warn you, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19). Surely it doesn't get any clearer than that?
Having a self-confessed alcoholic ordained to the clergy would amount to the same sort of hypocrisy. imagine going along to church to be led by a drunk and to hear the word of God from his mouth. Just doesn't seem right, does it?
Mike Healey, Hamilton.

Links:

Ted Olsen's weblog at ChristianityToday
Virtuosity speaks for orthodox Anglicanism
Catholic scholars offer their insights at first things
Anglican scholars offer their insights here
Episcopal innovations refuted at the Institute of Religion and Democracy

Although intellect and faith are not mutually exclusive, liberal theologians like Lloyd Geering and John Spong have descended into austere intellectualism, in their pride denying the authority of Scripture, and denying the reality of an authentic relationship with the Creator that millions of Christians enjoy.

Nerdy explanations of Occam's Razor

2004-02-10T22:38:00.000+13:00

In a typical slashdot thread about dark matter, there's a couple of enlightening contributions on Occam's Razor:

For instance, if I find a pinecone lying on the ground under a pine tree, the simplest explanation is that it fell off of the pine tree. Sure, it might have been planted there by invisible space aliens in conjunction with the Illuminati acting in strict accordance with the Masonic doctrine of the Coming of the Pine Cone King, but since there is no evidence to favor one explanation over the other, I should assume that it fell off of the pine tree.

More stuff is here and here.

Judicial hypocrisy over meat ads

2004-02-09T22:45:00.000+13:00

The Herald reports that the Meat Board cannot show a certain TV ad. The ad depicts butchers celebrating meat, by chanting like Hare-Krishna devotees. The powers that be deem a humorous ad 'unacceptable', while grotesque displays such as excrement, the prophylactic Virgin, children's genitalia, 'The Last Temptation of Christ' etc etc are permitted in the name of 'Art'. Sigh.

Prodigal Project

2004-02-07T22:56:00.000+13:00

Intro to The Prodigal Project - journey into the emerging church by Mike Riddell, Mark Pierson, Andrew Lorien, and Cathy Kirkpatrick. It provides insights into current trends in Western culture, particularly the decline of church attendance.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, the great ship of Western culture has been listing, terminally holed below the waterline. Why should a cultural synthesis which has endured for centuries suddenly begin to founder under our feet? It's not hard to identify some of the causes, but in the end none of them is sufficient to explain the events. There is an essential mystery in the turning of the tide of the ages, which Christians might want to describe as the activity of God in history. It is something we must have respect for rather than attempt to control, much as seafarers learn to honour and read the ocean.

[...] To be a Christian in these times is not easy for a Westerner. To be a churchgoer is even more difficult. There is something of a crisis of confidence, as previous modes of response to the world prove increasingly inadequate. In such times, it is important that we as the body of Christ do not turn on each other, nor be too quick to allocate blame for the difficult waters we have encountered. There have been many attempts to locate the bogey: the failure of the clergy, the selfishness of the laity, the lure of materialism, the subversion of 'humanism', the activity of demons, the lack of evangelism or the absence of the Spirit.

Full text:
'Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.' So sang Joni Mitchell many years ago, with sweet poignancy. And surely it does seem like the truth. Many people these days are grieving the loss of a way of life that has disappeared almost as quickly as the 'paradise' she mourned. We feel nostalgic for something, even when we can't find the words for what it is that's missing. Like the characters in George Orwell's 1984, we have vague memories that things may have been different once. But even the future has become past for us.

For better or for worse, we have the privilege of living through one of those periods of history when the world really does change, substantially and irretrievably. The general sense of dislocation felt by so many is a valid indicator that the ages are moving under our feet. The upheaval is such that, as Yeats1 had it, 'the centre cannot hold'. There is a good deal of anxiety felt in our global society at present, as the things which once were fixed begin to betray our long-standing trust in them.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, the great ship of Western culture has been listing, terminally holed below the waterline. Why should a cultural synthesis which has endured for centuries suddenly begin to founder under our feet? It's not hard to identify some of the causes, but in the end none of them is sufficient to explain the events. There is an essential mystery in the turning of the tide of the ages, which Christians might want to describe as the activity of God in history. It is something we must have respect for rather than attempt to control, much as seafarers learn to honour and read the ocean.

The fact that the mid-point of cultural transition coincided with the turning of the millennium has fuelled apocalyptic distress in the wider community. It is not necessary to be a social commentator or historian to be aware of deeply troubling disquiet. It 'feels', especially to those who straddle the ages, as if everything familiar has fallen around our ears, and we have woken in foreign territory populated by Barbarians.2 A great deal of the stress present in Western urban communities is due to this seemingly non-specific dis-ease.

The church, as one cultural vessel among many, finds itself in troubled waters. On the one hand, the ship of the church is itself foundering in the cross-currents of cultural transition. And on the other, it has become a sort of hospital ship, attracting refugees from a former era who find in it hope of return to more familiar waters. To employ a much-overworked analogy, there is a good deal of rearranging of the deckchairs, not to mention angry arguments on the bridge. Meanwhile, some distressed passengers are leaping overboard, preferring their chances in the open sea.

To be a Christian in these times is not easy for a Westerner. To be a churchgoer is even more difficult. There is something of a crisis of confidence, as previous modes of response to the world prove increasingly inadequate. In such times, it is important that we as the body of Christ do not turn on each other, nor be too quick to allocate blame for the difficult waters we have encountered. There have been many attempts to locate the bogey: the failure of the clergy, the selfishness of the laity, the lure of materialism, the subversion of 'humanism', the activity of demons, the lack of evangelism or the absence of the Spirit.

None of these is sufficient to explain current problems. Rather, much of the malaise the church is experiencing is simply the result of its participation in the wider cultural shift occurring in society. We have woken to find ourselves in 'exile', despite having no clear memories of getting there.3 It is, naturally, a strange and troubling place to be. It will be important to grieve, and to express the pain at that which has been lost. But it is also important to try to understand what it is that's different about this new place, and how we might learn to sing our songs in a foreign land.

seen the entire universe lately?

2004-02-07T22:54:00.000+13:00

Check out this logarithmic map from Princeton observatory. A few more cosmic sites are linked here.

About the Author

2003-12-19T23:03:00.000+13:00

Commenting from the logical, wise, irrefutable perspective of a cantabrian-christian-mystic-techie.

I am a 33 year-old Pakeha (0.06125 % Maori) bloke from Christchurch, working in IT. I was raised in South Auckland, have experienced life at the coal face of minimum wage NZ, but I hold a degree in mathematics and some engineering, and I am widely read.

Personal weblog plans:

a weekly (?) update of my latest adventures, with pictures
book reviews
comments on current affairs of interest, with links
tech stuff : some of my excellent essays and dinky programs (fortran, perl), from uni & personal interest.
links to k3wl tech sites like slashdot, kuro5hin, nature, wikipedia, and several more
a community website, for my local church, Grace VCF; A noticeboard managed by the webmaster (me!)

Every day I read conservative sites like christianitytoday, maxim.org.nz, reality.org.nz, nzpundit, anglicanmedia.com.au, TCS and lots more. Much of the content of my blog will consist of single-paragraph summaries of interesting articles from these sites, and a link for those interested in more. I will also comment on articles from Radio, TV and print media (esp. The (left-wing) Listener).

Developments of particular interest to me and other Christians

local news of political and legal attacks on the free exercise of religion, or
political/legal partiality to other creeds (eg. the govt donation of $100k to a mosque in chch)
biblical prophecy related to various world events (eg. microchips in dogs: will they be in humans next?)

I am particularly concerned about the apparent erosion of

civil society : family, volunteer orgs, churches, media
personal morality, dignity : I protest consumerism and self-idolatry. Money, sex and power (monopoly, twister, risk) must be constrained by the traditional virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience (Richard Foster)
postmodernism/humanism : I will expose the errors and prejudice of the popular axioms of our culture

The sovereignty of NZ is under assault:

the present government's pandering to the UN, Kyoto treaty, and countries with appalling human rights records, whilst disrespecting and failing to help our most valued allies Australia, USA, England.
unwarranted, unwanted republicanism; a politicised supreme court supplanting the Privy council; ungraceful snubbing of traditional honours OBE, knighthoods, etc. setting us adrift from our cultural roots.
floods of immigration driven by simple greed for ever higher property values with no concern for the social cost or the other kiwis left out of the mad money grab. And specious claims of racism against critics.
contemptible emasculation of our armed forces; poverty-stricken navy and air force; army stuck in the mud, unable to defend NZ

Plenty of grist for the mill.