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O.T - Religion & Climbing Poll. 26-Mar-2011 At 7:07:18 PM dave h.

Message

On 26/03/2011 rodw wrote:
>"heaps better off without Christian doctors like Catherine Hamlin" ...is
>it because she is Christian she is making a difference or simply because
>she is an educated moral person who just so happens to be christian?
>

Christians don't think of themselves as educated moral persons first and Christians second. That's putting the cart before the horse in a big way. As to why she's there you'd have to ask her or perhaps read the book... I can tell you that the 'mission' page on a related website, Hamlin Fistula International, says "Wholehearted commitment, with God's love and compassion, to women with childbirth injuries.

>I do believe a secular based society is better than a religious one

solely for the freedom of choice reasons you outline below?

>..were people are free to choose what they believe but religion cant dictate to
>others how to behave.

Excellent. We, and the New Testament, are in perfect agreement.

>Religion dosnt make or break a person in terms of
>how they act...and to believe it does to me comes across as being a bit
>naive.

No it doesn't necessarily dictate behaviour (one need only look at nominalism to realise this). But my point is that if someone argues that a world without religion would be a better world, that requires some sort of assessment of the effect that religion has had. A weighing of the good and the bad that it's done. My problem with the previous post is that it utterly failed to do that.

>A wolf in sheeps clothing is still a wolf, and an arsehole that
>claims to be christian/muslim/jewish/aetheist is still an arsehole.

Agreed.

>Of course seperating church from state is very hard to achieve, but will
>be better for all when it does properly happen IMHO.

Not sure what you're driving at. The so-called Christian Democratic Party? Or things like the reading of the Lord's Prayer at the start of Parliament? The first is a bigger deal for me than the second; while I can see why the second irritates some I think making an issue about it is misguided and everyone's got bigger fish to fry.

And how far do you want to take this separation? Sometimes Australian courts, in deciding whether or not to recognise marriages celebrated overseas, have reference to the English Canon law which regulated marriage prior to Lord Hardwick's Marriage Act. Without wanting to delve further into legal technicalities, is this an intolerable violation of the separation of church and state?