National Day of Secularism

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

Welcome one and all, to Australia's first National Day of Secularism.

Planned for today is a number of events designed to show one and all that Australia is the warm and tolerant place that we all know and love.

There'll be fun for young and old as we show all and sundry that we love and value every point of view, but none more so than the 13th commandment:

Thou shalt not impose thy religious view upon thy brother or sister. (Cyril 13:13)

Starting this morning will be morning teas all around the nation. In Melbourne, the party starts in Fitzroy Gardens, as Premier Steve Bracks operates the tea trolley himself, bringing steaming cups of Darjeeling round for all the punters to drink with their bacon and egg rolls or their spinach croissants. After which, Mr Bracks plans to say a few words where he gives thanks to our religious brothers and sisters for obeying the injunction against proselytising that was handed down in the High Court, only yesterday.

After this, there will be activities for all the kids, including the world's biggest jumping castle. Lord Mayor John So has told us that he plans to get his shoes off and show the rest of Australia why he's known as Jumping Johnny.

In Sydney, there will be a concert on the Opera House forecourt featuring Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and a re-united Redgum. Prime Minister John Howard will motor over the water from Kirribilli House to say a few words, climaxing with why courting the Hillsong vote was a silly idea, and apologising to Aboriginal Australia for past injustices. He also plans to mention that the Dreaming is every bit as valid a religious philosophy as those imported from around the world.

A highlight of this gig will naturally be the PM, current Labor MP Peter Garrett and former card carrying Democrat John Schumann pictured together laughing and telling stories about their kids.

In Brisbane today, there will be a series of speakers at a function in Southbank praising the Fathers of Federation for their foresight in the inclusion of Section 116 in our nation's 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.

Kevin Rudd, the Opposition Leader will use this opportunity to announce to the rest of Australia he will actively campaign to ensure that Christmas is renamed "Midsummer", Easter is moved to June and relabelled "Midwinter", as well as adding the following holidays to the Australian public holiday roster:

• UNESCO World science day - 10 November
• International cannabis day - 20 April
• International talk like a pirate day - 19 September
• Pi day - 14 March
• Pi approximation day - 22 July
• No pants day - First friday in May

This is expected to be wildly popular, so get there early, folks.

Finally, there will be a free concert in Canberra on the slope leading up to Parliament House.

The night will culminate in merriment when Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly and the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell drop their strides and dance the Eagle Rock.

Head of World Vision Australia, Rev Tim Costello promises to use the proceeds of the oversized novelty cheque that he receives for good and not for proselytising purposes.

What a shame none of this will really happen.

In reality, 26 May has been labelled the National Day of Thanksgiving by a group who appear to think that it should be co-opted by all and sundry as a "National Day of Thanksgiving". This National Day of Secularism blogfest is one way to protest this.

This group's agenda is up for all to see at their website and it should be clear from their "vision" that there is nothing secular about this group's agenda:

The concept of a National Day of Thanksgiving was in the hearts of many Australians for a number of years. Many people wrote to the Australian Prayer Network expressing a desire to see our nation called to prayer one day each year to acknowledge our Christian heritage and the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our nation.

The Australian Prayer Network took such thoughts and dreams to other national prayer and ministry organizations and church leaders. They received overwhelming encouragement to pursue the concept. The decision to proceed with a National Day of Thanksgiving was confirmed at a meeting of National ministry leaders at Parliament House Canberra on the 17th June 2003. They voted unanimously to support the Australian Prayer Network in their initiative. It was decided to hold a National Day of Thanksgiving on the Saturday of Pentecost weekend each year and to seek to have the day included in our national calendar.

It's interesting to note that they've got a spot where you can leave your "testimony" for all to see. I've testified that this is one step towards a theocracy that I didn't want to see our nation take.

But given that it's heavily moderated, I doubt that it'll ever be seen.

Blog against theocracy - National Day of Secularism - 26 May 2007

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

I have been tagged by Beep Beep, the wise sage responsible for Beep! Beep! It's Me.

How the “meme” works

This “meme” works in two steps; first the “Tagging stage” and then the “Blog against theocracy stage”. (the word "meme" incidentally, is one of the most pretentious words doing the rounds of the internet)

Tagging stage

If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.).

Blog against theocracy stage

If you have been tagged then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.

Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but there is no deadline as such. Just a couple of caveats:

1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and
2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.

I don't really know all that many Australian bloggers, and Beep and Plonka have already been tagged, but I will tag those I do know:

1. The Second Sight
2. Crazy World
3. Contempt


I'll have to leave the rest open.

Carnival of the Godless #66

The 66th Carnival of the Godless is up at The Atheist Experience, and yours truly has got The Meaning of Life up there for all.

My attention has been taken, this time aroung by a post at Symbolic Order by Aaron Ross Powell titled, "What atheism offers: Justifying a life's purpose."

A well written post.

Also, Bob, the Austin Atheist has put this up: How Not To Persuade An Atheist #1: Bypassing the Intellect . Excellent.

Elsewhere there is plenty of stuff for all so check it out here.

Check it out here.

The meaning of life

Hi folks. I'm not going to tell you The Meaning of Life today, instead, I'm going to talk about that age-old question:

"What is the meaning of life?"

This is a question that can, depending on what mood I'm in, either make me very irate, or very silly. In any event, it's not a question that I've ever seriously entertained myself, and I plan to discuss why, further down the page.

What does it mean? What is it all about? And what is its purpose?

I'm actually asking this about our question, and not about life, people. The question about the meaning of life is one of the slyest tools that proselytising theists like to use to ingratiate themselves onto freethinkers, and it's one that freethinkers such as atheists and agnostics prefer not to address.

But they should. This is a question that is not going to go away, no matter how hard we try, so let's have a look at it.

These days, usually whenever I hear this question, it's usually framed like this:

"Everybody thinks about the meaning of life."

I think that the presumption included within this one statement is breathtaking.

Let's have a look at some of the "leaps of faith" included within this sentence, and see if we can come to some sort of idea of what this sentence even means.

1. What do people mean, when they talk about the "meaning of life"?

This one has always confused the hell out of me. What is the meaning of life? I don't mean the meaning itself, really, I'm looking for someone to tell me about what they mean when they use this term.

I've heard a remarkably diverse number of answers on this very subject, but no one has yet been able to pinpoint a single definition that appears to have any degree of consensus.

Some answers include the following:

"What is my purpose?" - I'm uncertain of this as a possibility, as it appears to interpose a significant degree of vanity upon what is at first glance an answer about existence generally.

"Why are we here?" - This is a great example of a question that cannot be answered. If you were to ask me this, I would generally answer with the question, "If I give an answer, how are you going to prove me wrong?"

"What is our destiny?" - This is merely the first question with an attempt to remove the personal vanity. This is another great example of a question without an answer.

"For what reason are we alive?" - Finally, a question with a variety of possible answers. Personally, if this is given to me as a possible interpretation of the meaning of life question, I like to answer it with the most obvious answer there is - "A happy series of accidents involving mostly Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms." Unfortunately, this doesn't cut it with our intrepid questioners, so we have to move on.

"What is life's purpose?" - Yet another question with no possible answer.

Now I could go on and on with this, but it would appear to be, quite frankly, silly to continue.

What we have is a potentially limitless series of questions without answers that are designed to obfuscate and dazzle the respondant into a situation where they are overwhelmed by this potentially unlimited series of questions.

A more meaningful definition of "the meaning of life" is one that encompasses all of these - and yet this has no meaning at all. Apart from the grammatical impossibility of all of these forming a single "meaning", we still have no firm definition of what this is.

This does my head in sometimes, but why would anyone design a question to have no answer?

Why not ask these questions one by one?

The answer is God. The questions of the meaning of life really have no answer, but this is not important to the theist. What the theist wants you to do is to be so overwhelmed, and so dazzled by all the implications of whatever it is that you think that the question is all about, that it is immediately plausible amongst all this confusion that God exists as a way to make sense of it all.

I call bullshit.

"The meaning of life" is a gigantic red herring that renders all other questions secondary - yet it should not. It is through consideration of what is essentially a bogus concept that proselytizing theists are allowed to push their worldview onto the rest of us, and I really wish that it would stop.

It is also, a question without meaning. Theists have been allowed to get away with this one for years - and if you allow them to ask it without pulling them up, you're not doing them any favours, either.

Put simply, the term, "meaning of life" means nothing.

2. Does everyone think about it?

There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests that a lot of people consider this question, and we've seen from the first point that no one knows what problem it is that they're supposed to be solving, when they ponder the "meaning of life".

To be fair, we live in a world where at every possible opportunity, lots of people are prompted to think about this question. And not just by theists.

In his somewhat erroneously titled, Hitchhiker Trilogy, Douglas Adams came up with an answer to "Life, The Universe and Everything". The answer was, quite famously, 42.

Adams makes my first point pretty well, in that he made the point that the answer would make no sense until you could come up with a workable question.

In the real world, we're unlikely to come up with an answer until we've correctly formulated a question first, but it's interesting to note that the person doing the prompting of the reader to think about the meaning of life, in Adams' case, was a staunch atheist.

But in the examples we've used, the most interesting thing about them is that a third party has prompted the thinker to think about the meaning of life.

Nowhere do we have an example of someone thinking about this question unprompted.

So in this light, what do we make of the claim, oft stated by theists, that everyone thinks about the meaning of life?

It is implicit in the claim that people do this sort of thinking unprompted, however it is my view that the stats on this simply don't exist. And therefore, in the absence of hard evidence to suggest that people do think about the so-called meaning of life unprompted, the only reasonable position that we can take is that of the null hypothesis - that not everybody thinks about the meaning of life unprompted.

3. What use is the "meaning of life" question to us?

We've seen that the question itself is riddled with flaws as to its meaning, and we've seen that no one (to my knowledge) has ever produced stats that confirm that people naturally think about this question unprompted.

Our next question is about how the hell do we come up with some sort of viable use for such a question, once we have answered it?

The question, at this point in time is too vaguely worded to be of any use to us, and we simply have to accept that the utter meaninglessness of the question means that consideration of this question without any definable terms is an exercise in futility.

If it has any use at all, it is as an example of a completely useless question that should never have been asked in the first place - your archetypal unanswerable question.

Apart from this, it is inefficient to consider such questions.

4. How can God hope to provide the answers to such questions?

Theists are used to this sort of thing. No matter how ridiculously formulated a question is, if you ask it, He will be able to answer, goes the line.

Allow me to provide an excellent example:

"Ailwehfo;ihwe;ip' p owejf' eopj' wegopjwe wro[j wervg wegjo[asdoj skl;jsdv'phiasdf ojbvo?"

Believe it or not, a theist will maintain that there is an answer to this question.

Never mind that I formulated this question by just hitting keys at random, a sort of tactile version of glossolalia.

I've heard a theist, in exasperation, say, "Never mind the question: God will provide the answer."

The utter uselessness of this statement is staggering. How can God presume to answer a question that has no meaning?

And, more to the point, how can He presume that this question, to which I attach no personal relevance, will suddenly become more relevant after the answer has been provided?

Lastly, how useful would such an answer be?

No theist can seriously believe that God answers undefined and irrelevant questions that no one asked, really, do they?

And, one last point, can a theist really get away with the claim that everyone thinks about this "question" unprompted?

Hate mail to Bobby Henderson (updated)

I wrote this post on 27 July.

Since then, Bobby has updated his site to include spots for commenting on each of the hate mails.

So, so much more quality reading. And so many comments in the space of 24 to 48 hours.

This is going to be a rip-roaring success.

Ramen!

Note: (13/08/2006) Since I wrote this, I've realised that I didn't put the new link to the comments page, as I thought that Bobby hadn't changed it. Seems that I made an erroneous assumption, but anyway, the new comments page is here.

You must check it out.

Hate mail to Bobby Henderson

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Beep! Beep! It's Me. Cogito Ergo Sum. I can't hear you. I have a banana in my ear.

I don't know where Beep! Beep! gets these, but this is brilliant.

Beep! Beep! It's Me. Cogito Ergo Sum. I can't hear you. I have a banana in my ear.

Sadly, conflicting reports suggest that this case might have been dismissed, but I have an inkling that we're getting closer and closer to a case that actually goes the distance against a religion.