I am curious about Vonnegut’s view of religion having read it – some quick research (and much of his novels) suggests he was an atheist, but I can’t see a definitive answer. His characters appear to knowingly participate in grand cosmic jokes – whether objectively they are intended to have meaning in the context of the novel is, perhaps intentionally, hard to ascertain.

Where’s the cat? Where’s the cradle?

Specifically:

CTFM leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah said he would spearhead an effort to provide every assistance to devastated communities, although he was not surprised by the bush fires due to a dream he had last October relating to consequences of the abortion laws passed in Victoria.

He said these bushfires have come as a result of the incendiary abortion laws which decimate life in the womb. Besides providing material assistance, CTFM will commence a seven day prayer and fasting campaign for the nation of Australia tomorrow Wednesday the 11th February.

And further, Danny tells us that he had God on the Heaven hotline during some kind of peyote-type dream:

In my dream I saw fire everywhere with flames burning very high and uncontrollably. With this I woke up from my dream with the interpretation as the following words came to me in a flash from the Spirit of God.

That His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.

If there is a God, one suspects that Danny’s dream is more to do with his final destination than the bushfires. If I ran an organisation called “Catch the Fire” I’d probably have the tact to keep quiet at this point, too.

It was tempting to ignore this completely to avoid publicising in any slight way the sick views of these people. But in the end garbage like this should be dragged out into the light so that they are shown for what they are, cynical opportunists who are prepared to use a terrible event (which should unite the community) to divisively push their hateful message of intolerance. I can only hope that with the dramatic fall of the Bush regime and the tangible shift back towards rationality as the central tenet of Western society, we will see this get the reaction it deserves from our leaders and from the community generally – disgust at irrational and bigoted nonsense, not ‘tolerance’ of ‘religious views’.

Catch the Fire may be a familiar name. That’s because they are the same fundamentalists who received a personalised message from John Howard when he was frantically selling himself to every right wing group of wackos who might conceivably vote for him. Nice work John, you really did the office of PM proud. This is the same Danny Nalliah from Catch the Fire who has previously run as a candidate for Family First, the lunatic fringe party who now seem to be pushing the Government into a mandatory Internet filter via Senator Fielding’s crucial Senate vote.

Old Danny has given us his number, so feel free to use it to tell him what you think:

Danny Nalliah is available for interview on 03 9794 8211 Media contact: Jason Golden on 0404 952 768

Disclaimer: these are my views, and my views only.

Update: here is an ABC Blog on the same topic.  Interestingly, it points to this, which is Danny’s initial “warning” about the fires.  What is deeply disturbing about this blog is that some of the comments posted seems to subtly suggest that if Victoria needs to be punished, maybe the Lord’s followers are going to have to be the ones to inflict that punishment.  For example, “Trevor” says:

Fire will indeed come but not for the reason you have said.

and

Become a father to the fatherless and a friend to the alien. says the Lord. Yes do this and I will save you. I will save you and not as an urchin from a house fire. When you see the fire I start you will smell your clothes and they will be fresh.

Update 2: More on the hilarious antics of Pastor Nalliah and his “magic hands”.

Update 3: Catch the Fire are, of course, Sarah Palin fans, and recount the following, er, ‘prophecy’ to us:

It was at this moment Sarah Palin reached out for me to help her up, and as I was assisting her to stand, I was now face-to-face with her, and God said, “Open up your mouth and I will fill it.”

And it’s the best form of discrimination too – the kind by private citizens and businesses against other private citizens, so that we can all agree that they are “free” to refuse to accept business from anyone they want in the wonderful “free” market.  Of course if they did that because a person was, say, Catholic, they’d be hauled over the coals for weeks, Inquisition-style.

Former Brethren members Lydia Desai and Priscilla D’Souza have accused Exclusive Brethren members in three countries of crimes including genocide, people smuggling and slavery.

Justice North is on the progressive end of the spectrum (he gave the first instance judgment in the 1998 waterfront dispute in favour of the MUA, which was ultimately upheld by the High Court).  He will apparently ask the Victoria bar to supply a barrister for the otherwise self-represented applicants:

I rarely make this reference because I think we should be sparing to ask the bar to work free of charge, but I think your case may be a deserving one

Less encouraging is that the suit also names the Prime Minister as a respondent.  Nothing says ‘vexatious litigant’ like suing a head of state.

Painting: “Exclusive Brethren” by Jamin.

I wonder how hard this would be to fund in Australia, and whether it would somehow offend our anti-discrimination/hate speech laws, which (like our constitution, according to the High Court) seem to protect every belief system except atheism.

For example, the principal of one religious school tells The Age that at least he doesn’t “hide” evolution from students:

“We don’t hide the fact that there is a theory of evolution, and that’s how we’d present it, as a theory,” Mr Bray said.

“We teach it, explain what it is, and at the same time we present clearly and fairly, and we believe convincingly, the fact that our position as a school is that God created the heaven and earth … There wouldn’t be any point of being a faith-based school if we didn’t think that God was the creator.”

Mr Bray’s faith-based school has no problem accepting money from secular-based taxation of unbelievers, of course.  According to The Age, up to 200,000 Australian children are now being taught in evangelical Christian schools.

These issues are particularly relevant as the new Federal Government considers a reallocation of funding for such schools, which gradually increased throughout the Howard era.  A more in depth piece can be read here, which highlights the fact that independent schools in Victoria are exempt from discrimination laws relating to employment and are thus free to hire only the devout.

The image of judges – wearing the robes which represent their role in the state – seeking direct guidance from God is somewhat disconcerting. Australia has no state religion, by virtue of s 116 of the Constitution:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

(The NSW Constitution is silent on the topic).  That is not to say that the Constitution bans religion from the state in any sense – the same document refers to ‘Almighty God’ without identifying which particular variant of God is being exulted.

It would, of course, be unreasonable to criticise judges for exercising their freedom to worship in private. But it should be a topic for serious debate as to whether it is appropriate for judges to involve themselves in their capacity as judicial officers in the customs and ceremonies of a particular religious denomination.

As Keith Mason points out in this article, while there is little doubt that Christianity had much to do with the development of the common law and with Australia’s legal traditions, much of the modern law (and particularly insofar as it embodies a contemporary view of human rights) has involved sweeping outdated Biblical notions aside. For example:

The common law established that it was lawful for a husband to rape his wife and Biblical explanations were offered for this rule. This doctrine lasted until 1991 when it too was overturned through the proper exercise of the lawmaking powers of judges in Britain and Australia.

It is not uncommon for judges to refer to religious texts in their judgments.  Mason urges an approach to religion which avoids any hint of literal application of the scriptures, but not one which rejects outright any contribution to legal progress from religious sources:

Hopefully we have not reached the stage that an idea relevant to public or legal discourse is off limits if it is sourced to the Bible or because it forms part of a larger corpus of philosophy or theology.

In Cattanach v Melchior [2003] HCA 38, the High Court was asked to consider whether it was open to sue for damages resulting from the unplanned birth of a child due to another’s negligence.  As part of his judgment, Kirby J was highly critical of any suggestion that Biblical sources could guide the Court:

[i]f there is any area where the law has no business in intruding, it is in the enforcement of judicial interpretations of Scripture

His Honour’s argument is founded on a principle which should, perhaps, be more explicitly central to the judicial process: that an empirical basis must be identified for the incorporation of ‘public policy’ considerations into judicial decision-making:

In short, if the application of ordinary legal principles is to be denied on the basis of public policy, it is essential that such policy be spelt out so as to be susceptible of analysis and criticism. Desirably, it should be founded on empirical evidence, not mere judicial assertion [...]

Judges seeking to literally interpret religious texts and principles as a basis for decision making fail this test, for reasons that come to the heart of many debates about the role and validity of religion: scriptural doctrines cannot be tested or criticised logically, because they represent the arbitrary ‘word of God’ and quite openly purport to be immune to rational analysis and dissection.  As such, a decision founded on an interpretation of the word of a deity takes on a character entirely foreign to the strongly evidence- and precedent-based foundations of the common law, and the (in theory) rationalist and accountable form of government adopted in Australia.

And so, we return to Red Mass and the process (whether symbolic or literal) of judges seeking “divine guidance”, apparently on behalf of the Court.  Because the religion behind the mass (Christianity, and more specifically Catholicism) is a mainstream one in Australia, there is virtually no criticism of judges participating in it. It is hard to imagine that the situation would be the same if the religion in question were Islam (imagine the public response to a superior court judge seeking ‘divine guidance for the court’ from Allah in an antiquated Muslim ceremony) or some minor religion, or indeed if it were some other form of spirituality altogether, such as paganism.  But more importantly, it must be doubted whether it is proper in the 21st century for Australian judges to actively involve the court in the rituals of any religion at all. For the good of the law, it might be best if such things were kept strictly in the private sphere of judges’ lives.

In particular, two relationships stand out:

• atheism is proportional to growth in property value and inversely proportional to levels of mortgage debt; and
• low levels of education are (strongly) proportional to levels of Christianity.

Behold the graph of “year 10 education or lower” versus “Christian”:

Of course correlation != causation, but the relationships are interesting to ponder.

If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that’s fine. I’ll accept that.  I just don’t happen to think that I did.

Once again, it’s worth noting that this man would control approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons. The real story of what happened to the dinosaurs is shown below for illustrative purposes: