CHRISTIAN fundies Down Under have found something new to whinge about: secular ethics classes in selected Australian schools which they claim will sabotage conventional religious brainwashing sessions.
In the vanguard of opposition to the ethics class pilot scheme is retired brigadier Jim Wallace, a 24-carat nutjob who heads the Australian Christian Lobby. He recently shrilled:
For more than 100 years, Scripture classes in schools have provided an avenue for children to learn about the Bible, the person of Jesus and the ethic that has underpinned societies such as Australia’s.
This is entirely appropriate. No serious historian – regardless of whether or not they are religious — doubts the formative influence of Christianity, its ethics and values on the legal, cultural and political development of Western civilisation. Indeed it is the Judeo-Christian ethic that sets the way we live apart from the way other cultures live.
' ... and furthermore Jesus had a dick this big!' Jim Wallace addresses a herd of Christian fundies in Gympie, during the town's annual Prayer Breakfast.
He pointed out that the trial ethics curriculum is produced by the St James Ethics Centre and the aim is to:
Provide a secular complement for the discussion of the ethical dimension of students’ lives.
This by definition, he said:
Excludes the discussion of Christian values, which underpin so much of Australia’s ethical framework.
It will be interesting to see how values such as loving one’s neighbour, self-sacrifice, helping the poor etcetera are dealt with when the Bible stories that have shaped our understanding of these concepts for hundreds of years are excluded from the discussion.
The idea of loving one’s neighbour as oneself – or do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is religious. More accurately, it is Christian.
Secularism is certainly not neutral and those who wish to expunge Christian values from our schools and public institutions should more fully explain the worldview from which their alternative values derive.
The jackass blathered on:
It seems the ethics of the Bible and of the person of Jesus are now deemed so inconsequential that the Government must fund its own ethics curriculum and use its resources to draw students away from Scripture classes, which have been taught by dedicated volunteers for decades.
The Daily Paliban lost not time in pointing out that:
The ancient Greeks; Buddhists; Bahais; Confucianists; Taoists . . . None had a concept of how to treat one another, according to Wallace. Never mind the mountains of evidence to the contrary! Even Muslims, who came later and stem from Judaism but are not considered by Christians to be part of the “Judeo-Christian tradition” have recorded utterances by Mohammed embodying this concept. Wallace must have missed Comparative Religions class.
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 17th, 2010 at 8:49 am
Rationalists the world over are going to have a field day with THIS story – pointing out all the moral and ethical teaching in the Old Testament!
April 17th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Some good information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule_(ethics)
In actual fact, the Silver Rule (“Do not do to others as you would not have them do to you”), championed by people like Confucius and Ghandi, is often considered superior to the Golden Rule, quoted by Jesus, as we may not all WANT what others want. Many religiots, as we have seen, seem to delight in flagellation, but I think I can exist quite happily without it!
April 17th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Lovely how faith heads always have such a cosy view of their history isn’t it?
No mention of things like this…
http://www.janesoceania.com/au.....index1.htm
for example.
April 17th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Aside from the nutter fringe, such as Young Creationists and the like, how do non-secularists explain how we humans gave meaning to life before Abrahamic (and similar) religions?
How did we form communities that rubbed along together pretty well by all accounts when there was no super-natural being having his rules imposed on those communities by “enlightened” self-elected minorities interpreting such rules?
Easy really! It’s not a warped philosophy but a biological imperative from which ethics springs.
See: What makes life worth living and the book, The Brain and the Meaning of Life by Paul Thagard.
April 17th, 2010 at 9:44 am
“The idea of loving one’s neighbour as oneself – or do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is religious. More accurately, it is Christian”
What a fuckwit.
But he’s not the first Christian to misrepresent what went before.
Jesus is alleged to have said
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemy†(Matt. 5:43).
This statement does not exist in the Old Testament. In fact, Leviticus 19:17-18 says “do not hate your brother in your heart…… do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourselfâ€, and Proverbs 24:17 says, “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles do not let your heart rejoice.”
The ethic of reciprocity goes back even further than Judaism and was known, for example, to the ancient Egyptians.
April 17th, 2010 at 10:19 am
If he had stopped right there, it would have been hard to disagree that he was presenting a bald fact. But no, he had to go on and give us his private spin on that fact.
BTW, have you noticed that when they say “Western Civilization” they actually seem to be talking about Anglo-Saxon civilization? I doubt he meant to champion the civilization of, say, Uruguay.
April 17th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Anyone who believes that the Judeo-Christian ethic is an example of for modern society has never read the book of Joshua. The murder of every man, woman, child, and livestock is not exactly “do unto to others”. The story of “the flood” kinda comes up short in that area as well. For those with their eyes open, Yahweh is a murderous bastard that makes Hitler look like a kindergarten teacher.
Western values are common sense, and did not come out of any religious text, and any claim that they did is an insult to our intelligence.
NeoWolfe
April 17th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Do you think he really believes this bullshit? This is something that often crosses my mind. Do these assholes sincerely think all this crap about their god (pick one, any one), their prophets, their creation myths is genuinely true? Hard to credit…
April 17th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Who let the nuts out this time? Village-idiots going global, it seems. And this guy was a brigadier in the armed forces? Don’t they test people before they’re allowed to play soldiers?
April 17th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
What an idiot. For a start, and it is only a start, much of the advice given allegedly by St Paul – particularly to medieval monks – was lifted straight from the Encheiridion of Epictetus. Even then they were liars and plagiarising whatever came their way.
April 17th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Can you tell what he is yet?
April 17th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I had compulsory scripture during primary school (in Australia). I don’t really remember very much of it- a little old lady coming in and telling us to be good because it says so in these Bible verses, and we did a lot of colouring in is basically my memory. Even at the time, as a believer, I didn’t think it was of the same intellectual rigour (although I wouldn’t have used that phrase when I was ten) as the rest of school. I do remember being very jealous of those kids who didn’t have religious instruction to accommodate them (IIRC there was Roman Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Baptist, and a couple of other Christian classes, everyone else got to play for an hour)- never occurred to me at the time that they were “missing out”.
I can safely say that those in school scripture classes taught me nothing- except perhaps that I was crap at colouring in. (Even from the perspective of a believer- they go into more depth at church if you want to give your kid religous education)
April 17th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Deluded twat
April 17th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
The number of times christians censored or destroyed anything from classical times which disagreed with christian fantasy are too many to attempt to repeat. They also so infected the minds of others, including for example Matthew Arnold, that these others had to withdraw from or have reservations of Greek and Roman great minds because they showed signs of paganism.
Ignorance and bigotry parading as knowledge and virtue – that is at the core of christianity.
April 17th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Broga said:
“Ignorance and bigotry parading as knowledge and virtue – that is at the core of christianity.”
My favorite story on this vein is that of Galileo, who happened to be a devout catholic. With a telescope of far inferior quality than those of most peeping-toms, he figured out that the earth was not the center of the universe. In fact it was one of several planets orbiting the sun. When he published his theories he was called before the church hierarchy and forced to publicly denounce his theories, and was sentenced to life under house arrest.
This is typical of how religion uses ignorance as a tool to enslave the masses. It is entertaining to see the fundies writhe in the waves as the tsunami of science crashes over them. Day by day their stupidity becomes more apparent, yet they pathetically cling to their boat anchor.
NeoWolfe
April 18th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Yes,the usual Christian argument in support of the idea of a ‘Judeo-Christian’ basis to Western civilization is to ‘cherry-pick’ those ethical principles from the Bible that happen to be compatible with modern morality and then claim -”see that proves our argument”. This attitude demonstrates a wilful ignorance of history and there is also ample scientific evidence that some ethical principles are innate to primates and other social animals. We don’t need an invisible ‘Big Brother’ to tell us how to behave.
April 18th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
For a few weeks this year on Tuesdays there was a man in one of Kingston’s busiest streets with a large yellow banner that read ‘The Trouble With Athiests’ – underneath – ‘No Morals’.
Six little words packed with such self-importance, prejudice and delusion of exclusive rights to winsome qualities that I imagine, like most things fundies display, it probably did more to turn the shoppers off religion.
April 18th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
I’m pretty sure that’s not the Brigadier Jon Pertwee’s Dr Who kicked ass with.
@Broga
“Ignorance and bigotry parading as knowledge and virtue – that is at the core of christianity.”
That about sums it all up. Would you mind me passing this on?
April 19th, 2010 at 3:24 am
I’ve tried accessing the ACL website three different ways and it keeps freezing my computer! Anyone got any ideas?