I questioned Larissa Waters at the Greens ICT forum tonight on chaplaincy and secular education. She stated categorically that the Greens intend to spend the chaplains money on secular counsellors instead.
My recent post Censorship of Mobile Apps and Games

+1 Sean, I'm at a total loss as to how to make people understand that this is potentially a defining election, which in ten or twenty years time we'll look back on and say "that was the beginning of the end of free speech and privacy in Australia".

Conroy says he just wants to treat the internet like any other communications and distribution platform. Is that so? Then when will our phone calls be recorded and filed, our mail opened, scanned and filed, our attendance at movie and drama theaters logged, in case that information is needed for future law enforcement? That would be consistent with what they intend to do to our internet use. When will we start reporting to the government which books and magazines we read, which music we listen to, and what subversive ideas we think?

I desperately hope that it will never come to that, but that is exactly what logging our internet usage amounts to. Labor are afraid of the Australian people and are treating us all like criminals-in-waiting. Abbott or no Abbott, they have to go before they damage this country irreperably.
My recent post Dear Tony- Do you love your country or not

There's always doubt about everything. We could be living in the Matrix and everything could be an illusion. The smallest fundamental particle could be a tiny FSM. So what? Extreme skepticism adds nothing to the search for truth other than a disclaimer.

I'm interested in the logical conclusions that observations of our universe lead to. If the universe is lying to me, there's nothing I can do about it, nor any way I can know it, so it's irrelevant.

Some atheists have also personally established, through examination of anthropological, socialogical and other scientific evidence, that there is good reason to suspect that gods are man made. While this does not explicitly countermand the existence of gods, which may exist anyway, it can help to forge a "stronger" atheist position; far from agnosticism with no taint of "belief".

It is certainly patently unfair (borderline abusive) that children of parents who have elected to not have them subjected to religious indoctrination at their state school should be ostracised, and it certainly does occur. I have heard of some schools in which the students are told to simply sit outside the classroom by themselves.

Enrolling those children in an alternative ethics class appears to be an excellent suggestion, and one which I will evaluate for presentation to my son's school's P&C.

It's a shame that this class would not be part of the core curriculum for all students though, as secular ethics and critical thinking are vitally important. I suppose that over time, as more parents saw the value in it, it may be more popular than the bible bashing class. We can dream!
My recent post Lies, damned lies and Conroy

Indeed - of course theistic belief is all about abdicating responsibility for human evil. Abuse is the work of the devil, and priests are the devil's favourite plaything right? So it's not really their fault.

Therein lies the true evil of religion.
My recent post deep thought Monday

The worst part of this (other than the actual abuse) is that the church seems more worried about the abuse bringing the church into disrepute than it is about the actual harm the abuse caused. They seem to have zero compassion for the actual victims, and lack the outrage that most normal people have.