The suffering of little children

The Australian Royal Commission into the Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse reveals some revolting conduct on the part of church organisations and government authorities; but what is unsaid is that the behaviour was produced in partnership with a complicit social context. There was a tendency in the 40s to 50s and even 60s to regard children as lesser people, almost as objects for the application of authority against them, to regard church groups as trusted self-governing organisations that 'knew best' as they engaged in the (public) humiliation, terrifying of and injuriously inflicting immense pain upon children. Most parents hit their children and thought that it was the right thing to do. It was not. Police acted as though children were congenitally oppositional and failed to believe them, as did other authorities, and if they didn't, nothing a child said was important anyway.

However, churches should be influenced by the Bible and not society.

Where's the starting point?

There are a few candidates, but all together the scriptures structure the way church organisations should work and provide no excuse for the godless behaviour they abetted.

Let's start with Matthew 18:6. Our lord was so concerned that children's relationship with  him be unimpaired by the actions of adults that he reserved the most grave fate for those who transgressed it. This alone should have exercised church authorities to remove the cancer of evil from their communities. But it did not.

And churches should have known, as Lord Acton observed, that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Spirit got there first, however in Jeremiah 17:9. "The heart is wicked...who can know it."

Knowing this and that we are all sinners, all prone to damage others, their guard should have been up, particularly as they saw people doing directly what the scriptures opposed: Ephesians 6:4 tells us how to raise children (and don't think that Proverbs 23:13 overturns this; it is a proverb, not a command; it is figurative not descriptive, just compare it to the extravagant language in other proverbs: do you really put a knife to your throat when you eat with the king, Proverbs 23:1-2?).

So what should a church organisation have done if it saw someone behaving against Ephesians 6:4, and not conforming in their manner to the vulnerable as Galatians 5:22 instructs?

Should they have kept it 'in-house'? Not at all!

Knowing the wickedness of a person who so acted, and that the corruption of power was at hand, seeing behaviour that was disjoined from a community infused with the Spirit of our saviour they should have excised the perpetrators from that community immediately (there's plenty of basis in the Bible for dis-fellowshipping evil-doers) and referred the people involved to the police, because the state holds the sword for the restraint of evil. Romans 13:3-5 and not the church.

A little Bad Science

How can you know that its Bad Science? Here's how:

Just like most urging of evolutionist authors: even Darwin was full of it...'just imagine'.

Whose beliefs?

In a local newspaper (it charges for web use, so I won't  name it) mention was made of the new NSW Premier Mike Baird's 'conservative Christian' beliefs and that these were connected with his rejection of so-called 'gay' marriage (I must say, we all felt pretty gay at my wedding...I resent a good word being stolen in a transparent attempt to legitimise sexual perversion) and single sex adoption (i.e. two blokes, etc.)

It was set as though his rejection of these touted twists to society were part of some strange 'add-on' to his thought world called 'beliefs', in contrast to those who supported such notions from somewhere else in their psyche: based on 'rights', I suppose, or 'choice' etc.

But all we have, is beliefs. Some people's are grounded in the revelation of our creator, others are secured by little more that the almost solipsistic triumphalism of the self; but this too is a belief; and, dare I point out, a 'religious' belief. That is, it makes reference to something taken as basic in reality. For modern individualistic westerners nothing is more basic than 'what I think and for no particular reason', however it is dressed up ('rights', 'choice', etc, as though these movements of the will hang somewhere in the air).

Thus, it is a contest of beliefs, not only about God or our contingent existence, but the way society works over time, the way the young are nurtured (and produced: same-sexism is, of course parasitic on proper sexual conduct that produces offspring) and the structure of marriage to provide an orderly method for providing for the welfare of mothers and children.

In these terms it is obvious that marriage of male to male is not marriage, or a play at marriage to pretend legitimacy of conduct, much like single sex adoption is a weird play at families that are impossible to produce through the conduct represented, showing it up for the sham it is.

Society has historically resisted such practices because they contain the destruction of society: in a single generation if ubiquitous, but still, it constitutes a 'death-style' to quote an American politician, in hollow parody of a 'life-style'.

Tips for atheists

On the Drum (an ABC discussion forum), John Dickson helpful gives atheists some tips about discussing with Christians.

He gets a few points for trying, looses points for being condescending and smug, but shoots himself in his foot when it gets to '6-day creation'.

Naturally, he steps around it on the 'popular vote' principle (you know, science is established by popular vote), but fails theologically.

What is hilarious is that many of the comments on Dickson's tips fell back to 'science' (admittedly, in a juvenile and superficial manner) to rebut his views that themselves start with an ungrounded creation: a creation account that has no real world connections is just like a creation account that means nothing; it is the real world as locus of our being together that counts. If God cannot make the connection in terms of the very creation that he authored, then there is no connection to be made, and the 'ground of our being' is not God, but as the materialists have it.

Thanks John, you've just thrown the race and helped more people to perdition.

Knowing nothing

I'm re-reading Stove's book Darwinian Fairytales at the moment; full of 'emporeror's new clothes' class of bon mots contra darwinian evolution, as it is.

Here's one:

All Darwinians have a remarkable asymmetry of mind where their own species is concerned. On the one hand there is the human life which, both by experience and by reading history and literature, they know a great deal about; but all of this they put to one side, as having nothing to do with theory. They have to put it aside, because of course this human life contains not a single instance of the famous Darwinian struggle, and in fact consists entirely of disconfirmations of that theory. But on the other hand, Darwinians draw endless confirmations of their theory form the lives of extinct or hypothetical or imaginary or impossible human beings, concerning whom they know exactly as much as the reset of us do: namely nothing. for Darwinians, where their own species is concerned, it's not what you know that counts; its what you don't know.

And that just about sums it up.

Evolution is for...'clever' people.

Steven Kates in Quadrant  has put it quite succinctly:

But, but … evolution based on sheer chance; on random mutations and natural selection? It simply doesn’t pass the sniff test. Only very clever people could believe it in that form without there being much more compelling evidence.

The New Atheists

Hop over to Thom. Aquinas College for a lecture on the so-called 'new atheists'.

What if Darwin was right?

The typical conversation with parents that I have at work goes something like:

"Your child has a difference in their genes that means they won't develop along typical lines (I've generalised the gender on purpose). I'm very sorry to have to tell you that they have a condition known as ARX (Aristaless related homeobox) mutation that gives rise to intellectual disability."

If Darwin was right and evolution happened as he claimed, I'd be having conversations like this:

"Your child's development has been a little unusual. We've done a genetic test and he has a mutation on one of his genes that means he will probably never fall ill."

OR

"We've run a genetic test on your child for a recently identified mutation that only boys get. If he develops like most people with this mutation, he will have a life of incredible athletic performance and social capability."

OR

"The tests on your child show that he will be likely to lead an extraordinary life. Your biggest challenge will be to keep  him intellectually stimulated because, if he is like others with this mutation, his intelligence will be extremely high."

But its not like this! We don't see beneficial mutations. We see bad stuff and heartbreak instead.

Same story at the Human Gene Mutation Database: not good news.

So, over to you, Mr Darwin...when will we see the beneficial mutations popping up?

Bernard does Richard

Nice post by Bernard Gaynor on Richard Dawkin's self obsessed ranting.