God & Gerard
On the ABC’s Religion Report last year (September 29), presenter Toni Hassan referred, mockingly, to “John Howard’s deal with God”. It’s most unlikely that she would have been so dismissive of the beliefs of, say, a committed mainstream Muslim. There are many such examples of double standards in both the electronic and print media.
If a committed Muslim ever becomes Prime Minister and begins encouraging Muslim MPs in their efforts to impose God-based policy on the rest of us, Gerard will be in a much better position to accurately assess this supposed double standard.
[I]n introducing a report on ABC radio’s AM program last Tuesday, presenter Tony Eastley depicted Boswell’s focus on abortion as being “like a dog with a bone”. It is hard to imagine such a comment being made concerning Greens leader Bob Brown’s focus on forests.
The difference, of course, is that Bob Brown has at his disposal an argument that doesn’t rely on superstition (which he is inclined to use in preference to those arguments that do).
God & Politics
Reverend Nigel Fortescue has a bit of a rave in The Age letters column today (I’ve copied the whole thing, becaue the link will have rotted by tomorrow):
We’re all ‘religious’
How long will it be before that old chestnut “keep religion out of politics” is laid to rest. It has reared its ugly head again in the abortion debate and it is time for clarity.
A religion is a system of thinking or world-view based on your understanding of God. So, if you think God does not exist, you are still religious and you argue your case from the atheistic religion you embrace. In reality, everyone is religious, because everyone has a view on God, whoever he, she or it may be.
So, I will butt out of politics as soon as everyone else does. But until then, the Christian view I embrace has just as much right to be heard as the atheist view that tends to predominate this and other discussions.
Reverend Nigel Fortescue, Naremburn, NSW
“So, if you think God does not exist, you are still religious and you argue your case from the atheistic religion you embrace.” Sorry Nigel, but that’s crap. Saying that atheism is just another religion is like saying that science is just another superstition. It’s the difference between a belief based on rational enquiry and belief based on the will to believe. Let’s say that I happen to believe, honestly and wholeheartedly, that the Earth will end tomorrow. That belief is no more or less rational than a belief in God, and it’s no more or less valid as a foundation on which to formulate public policy. Unless I could come up with some rational arguments as to why it was reasonably to think that the Earth would, in fact, end tomorrow, I’d be (quite rightly) thought of as a loony who would be best served by keeping his beliefs to himself.
Nigel’s last paragraph, though, I agree with. He has every right to make his opinion heard. But public discourse is (or at least claims to be) rational discourse. If he chooses to base his public position (a position which has implications for all women no matter what they believe) on a belief for which there is no rational justification, then that’s up to him, but he shouldn’t be surprised when it’s held up to ridicule. “Keep religion out of politics”, it seems to me, is a useful maxim not only for those who want to keep political debate within the realm of rational argument. It is also useful for those who want to keep religious beliefs out of the realm of rational enquiry. If you want to protect your beliefs against the perils of counter-argument and dismissal, then keep them to yourself and stop trying to impose them on other people. If you want to enter the public arena, then do so with something other than God to back up your position.
At Auction
I was outbid by five bucks. Uncharitably, I mused that I could have afforded to go higher had I economised on my deodorant budget to the same degree as my overbidder. After a minute or so, though, I realised that I had been unkind. After all, the guy had rescued me from a long drive home with a sheepish expression and a palletload of dodgy zip drives.
Without really noticing it, I think we’ve reached an important point in the development of computer technology. It’s often been remarked that people don’t feel they have to upgrade their computers all the time any more, because a five-year-old machine will run Microsoft Word very nearly as well as a brand new one. An overlooked corollary of this, though, is that second-hand computer gear has become a viable option. Years ago, it was thought of as a bit foolish to look for a used PC. Every time a new version of your office software came out (which, in those days, probably offered some compelling new feature, like the ability of a word processor to draw tables), your old PC would labour a little more under the strain. Eventually it would become unusable. Buying a brand spanking new machine was the only way you could defer the inevitable for a few years. Buying a used one was an exercise in futility.
Now, though, unless you’re into heavy multimedia editing or gaming, any old banger will do the job and keep doing the job into the foreseeable future. At this auction, you could have picked up a whole system complete with monitor and keyboard for about $200. They were a few generations behind a current computer, but they were faster units than the one that I only very recently stopped using after five trouble-free years. If I hadn’t needed to do some fairly demanding audio processing, I would probably still be using it. Certainly, it browsed the web and wrote emails every bit as well as the new whizbang one does.
With all that in mind, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen more second-hand computer retailers springing up. I know that there are some, and I seen to remember a TV infomercial that was running for a while, selling scandalously overpriced “reconditioned” old bangers, but I would have thought the time was right now for used PCs to become the default for uni students or small business or for housing people’s mp3 and photo collections. I wonder if there’s a bit of residual reluctance from the days when a year-old PC would feel like a dinosaur?
Oh, and if you don’t mind driving into some dodgy-looking industrial estate and standing in a hot warehouse full of smelly men listening to the annoying voice (part nasal, part hoarse) of an auctioneer through a crappy wireless microphone and a crappier PA system for the best part of a day, there are bargains to be had. You might be the only one in the room with whom the auctioneer isn’t on a first-name basis. You might be the only one in unstained clothing. But don’t let that intimidate you. Job lots of Tamagotchi await.