Best gift of all has to be the news that Tony Abbott’s sister is gay and a same-sex marriage activist. :)
Have an awesomeness Sunday.
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religion
Liz(osaurus) is amazing.
She tells the government what she wants.
She’s giving away an inflatable dinosaur.
She loves cats.
She says other things we’re all thinking.
And she’s organising the Little Bloggy Blood Drive on October 8. Join us?
Reckon she’d like me in my cats ears when giving blood? :p
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- Slutwalk.
- The Rapture
- Cate Blanchett
- Muslims getting Billboards in Sydney.
- How I wish I was a mum and was running this blog as an atheist/raising freethinkers/evidence based practice mum blog just to enter it into the Top 25 Faith Bloggers thingy to irritate the Christian mums who were irritated at there being Pagan mums in a Faith Blog contest
How about you? What didn’t you blog about last week?
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Happy International Women’s Day! :)
Last night, we went to a public talk by Leslie Cannold (@LeslieCannold) at the ANU entitled “Lecture on The Sleeping Dragon: The Unfinished Business of Abortion Law Reform in Australia“. AMAZING. It astonished me, and made me angry that there are still so many “faceless” men and women making decisions thinking they know what is best for me and my body.
A 19 year-old Cairns woman and her 20 year–old partner are charged with procuring an abortion and hauled into court. This did not take place in the 19th century when the laws were framed. The couple were tried in late 2010.
In this lecture, Dr Leslie Cannold will argue that abortion law reform in Australia is unfinished business. Only in the ACT and Victoria is abortion not a crime. She will discuss why abortion is still a fundamental issue for women and how we can – and must – campaign for change.
Dr Cannold is an author, commentator, ethicist and activist. She is an adjunct Fellow at the School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry at the University of Melbourne and senior lecturer at the Monash Institute of Health Services Research. She is President of Reproductive Choice Australia, a national coalition of pro-choice organisations that played a key role in removing the effective ban on the abortion drug RU486. Dr Cannold is also President of Pro Choice Victoria which was instrumental in the decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria in 2008. Her books include The Abortion Myth and What, No Baby? She has a chapter on abortion in The Australian Book of Atheism <(Scribe 2010) and her first novel, The Book of Rachael, will be published by Text in April 2011.
I believe the transcript and lecture will be available on Radio National in the not too distant future, will let you know! The transcript is here. (DON’T read the comments. Unless you feel like getting outraged once more)
I DO have issues with Catholic health care and any restrictions they place on us because of their beliefs, particularly as they are often the only tax payer funded facilities in a town. I have issues with Labor factions, with being lied to about whether I can access a safe procedure, whether I can access something in ACT but not in my home town of Newcastle in NSW, or even 10 km away in Queanbeyan.
I have issues with someone else’s “morals” dictating my actions, them thinking they know what’s “best”. I know I am not always the most coherent in arguing my point, but it angers and upsets me that there is so much shame about abortion, and that you need to lie through your teeth to get one, when having a surprise baby is not in most people’s gameplan. Nor is it always the best option :(
An author I need to read more of. Thank you Leslie for your talk last night. Thank you for alerting me to the fact that most Australians don’t have the same options that I enjoy in the ACT. That there is a still a way to go. Thank you for that.
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The Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) launched a new website designed to encourage individuals and families to think about the importance and impact of their answer to the Census question: “What is the person’s religion?”
This campaign is part of a wider education and communication campaign being run by the Atheist Foundation of Australia that draws attention to the fact that the wording of this question means many people will select the religion of their baptism or initiation at youth, despite not being a religious person at all.
This website — www.CensusNoReligion.org — has been designed as a resource for interested Australians in the lead up to the next Australian Census being held on 9 August 2011. It gives people information about how the results of this question can be misused to allocate funds, overstate the number of actively religious people in Australia, and exaggerate the importance of religion in modern Australia.
AFA President David Nicholls said, “Data from the Census is used by parliamentarians and religious leaders to sway politics and social policy in favour of complying with religious tenets and ecclesiastical notions. In fact in many cases, it makes a situation where a decision that should rely on empirical evidence is overridden by religious demands.
“The coming Census in Australia is an important chance to make sure your interests are met in decision making and funding and that views you do not hold are not over-represented in the coming years,” Nicholls said. “I encourage everyone to visit the website and make sure they are informed of the implications of their answers, and if you are not religious now to mark ‘No religion’ on August 9.”
For more information go to: www.CensusNoReligion.org
It seems simple enough, right? If you’re not religious, mark “no religion”…
Oh and not “jedi”.
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Press release from the Atheist Foundation of Australia:
Atheists are astonished by the latest attempt from Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, to demonise the growing number of Australians who live without religion.
Speaking at a Mass celebrating the appointment of General Peter Cosgrove as Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, Pell preached that atheists “are frightened by the future.” He went on to say that “It’s almost as though they’ve … nothing but fear to distract themselves from the fact that without God the universe has no objective purpose or meaning. Nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss.”Once again, Pell’s comments fly in the face of all evidence. In truth, atheists live their lives with an integrity and intellectual rigour that Pell and his Church can only dream of.
Far from seeking to cover the abyss, the atheist looks a hostile universe full in its face without recourse to the emotional security blanket of religion and the supernatural. Unlike Pell’s Church (which has become a byword for superstition and resistance to scientific thinking) the atheist sees the world on its own terms, without the rose-tinted glasses of the promise of an afterlife.
Not content with mischaracterising atheism as weak and fearful, Pell went on to make the extraordinary proposition that “Australian society will become increasingly coarse and uncaring … if Christian principles are excluded from public discussion.”
To state that without the supervision of the Church the Australian people would turn to delinquency is frankly insulting. Hundreds of thousands of atheists and agnostics around the world live their lives ethically and with integrity.
Perhaps what Pell finds so threatening is that they do so according to principles drawn from their own reason and experience, not from slavish obedience to the adulterated writings of ancient and ignorant tent-living goat herders.
Moreover, given the damage that “Christian principles” have inflicted (Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia to name two recent examples), surely they days of Catholics claiming moral superiority should be over.
Still can’t wait to put up my tree and its new decorations!! :)
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Media Release – Atheist Foundation of Australia:
Atheist Foundation of Australia President David Nicholls today called for reason to prevail in the frenzy leading up to the canonisation of Mary MacKillop and asks that governments and individuals re-direct the money being spent on trips to Rome towards cancer research and financial support for cancer sufferers.
“The amount of money that is being spent by individuals and governments on a ceremony to acknowledge a person who had been dead for 50 years before she supposedly ‘cured’ someone of cancer, is staggering and completely inappropriate,” he said.
Pope Benedict XVI recently announced that Melbourne-born nun Mary MacKillop would be canonised on October 17 after the Vatican agreed that she had been the cause of two miracles—allegedly curing a woman of Leukaemia in 1961 and NSW grandmother Kathleen Evans of lung and brain cancer in 1993.
“It must be an embarrassment to many members of the Catholic Church that this kind of mumbo jumbo is accepted as reasonable in an age where people are cured of cancer every day, and many cancers go into remission for no discernable reason. This does not mean there is no reason, only that the reason is unknown. What will the RC Church say when science discovers the reason?” said David Nicholls.
“It is important to remember that the rules and processes for identifying a saint are not based in science. Science does not state that because we do not know, a god did it.”
“The fact that this is taken seriously by anyone is a big concern for modern society. It is not only holding up myth and fairytale over commonsense and science, but it is showing such a misguided prioritisation of taxpayer’s money and time.”
“One has to wonder at the selection process for curing very ill patients. Why are two people saved and thousands not. Do they have less valuable lives in the eyes of a heartless god?”
“Of course it is wonderful that these people experienced a reprieve from a terrible disease, but just because their recovery seemed unlikely, does not make it the work of a long dead nun and an omniscient being.”
“I call on everyone touched by these people’s stories to focus their attention on helping other victims of cancer and their families, not on witnessing an event that is based on a fairytale concocted by the Catholic Church,” he said.
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Shelley asked “I wonder what happens when you put a soft puppy next to god?”
Does it soften his image? Do puppies work better in helping the image of toilet paper?
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(Please excuse the use of the media release. I agree with it, but am too tired to think of the words right now)
Atheist Foundation of Australia president David Nicholls today expressed deep concern over Prime Minister Gillard’s announcement over the weekend to increase funding to school chaplains by $222 million.
In a submission to the public consultation process about the National School Chaplaincy Program, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) raised concerns about the credentials of many Chaplains providing counselling services as part of the Chaplaincy program in Australian schools.
In their submission they state that the ‘government is supporting a scheme which allows unregistered and unqualified school chaplains to work outside their boundaries as spiritual and religious personnel’[1] and point out that there is clear evidence that school chaplains are engaging in duties for which they are not qualified.
Although the government guidelines state that ‘school chaplains cannot provide services for which they are not qualified, for example counselling services or psychological assessment’[2] it also states that school chaplains are employed to support students for issues such as ‘grief, family breakdown and other crisis situations’[3].
‘Evidence shows that Chaplains with as little as 36 hours training[4] are counselling students and providing funding to support these chaplains is irresponsible and dangerous,’ said David Nicholls.
“There is a reason that Psychologists have a minimum of 6 years training before being able to provide psychological support services and to think that a two day course and belief in an imaginary being will help these children is ridiculous,’ he said.
One of the major providers of school chaplains the Scripture Union of Australia has as one of its aims to “make God’s Good News known to children, young people and families.”[5]
‘Providing funding to a scheme that supports this religious indoctrination in schools is a clear breach of the separation of church and state and atheists, freethinkers and secularists across Australia will be extremely disappointed in Prime Minister Gillard’s conservative and risky stance,’ said David Nicholls.
[1] Australian Psychological Society’s ‘Submission to the Consultation Process for the National School Chaplaincy Program’ July 2010.
[2] Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations NSCP ‘FAQ’ page outlining the school chaplain’s roles.
[3] Ibid page 2.
[4] ACCESS Ministry course brochure 2010.
[5] SUA website
See further: http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/.
Funds should go towards appropriately trained teachers, psychologists, social workers or youth workers to provide services such as those outlined above.
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The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Originally uploaded by AKA Dillweed
I hope that you, too, are touched by his noodly appendage.
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