Kiwiblog

Another interesting UMR poll. I like the scale they used which was:

• Are absolutely certain it is true
• Are fairly certain it is true
• Believe it’s true but are not too certain
• Believe it’s true but are not at all certain
• Believe it’s not true but are not at all certain
• Believe it’s not true but are not too certain
• Are fairly certain it is not true
• Are absolutely certain it is not true

The first four can be totalled to be agreement and the last four disagreement, but as interesting as the totals are the breakdowns.

On belief in God, the responses were:

• 28% absolutely certain it is true
• 13% fairly certain it is true
• 9% believe it’s true but are not too certain
• 11% believe it’s true but are not at all certain
• 6% believe it’s not true but are not at all certain
• 5% believe it’s not true but are not too certain
• 11% are fairly certain it is not true
• 16% are absolutely certain it is not true

I am amused at the 44% who answer absolutely certain there is or is not a God. I’d love to know how they can be “absolutely” certain!

The demographic breakdown is interesting:

72% of women believe in God, compared with 52% of men.

That’s a large difference, and not one I was aware of previously. Why would 20% more women believe in God? Is it men are more into proof than faith?

65% of Maori and 72% of Pacific people believe in God.

Less surprising.

Another question was if you believed Jesus Christ was a real person who lived 2,000 years ago. This was regardless of if you think he was the son of God, a prophet, a preacher etc.

• 29% absolutely certain it is true
• 25% fairly certain it is true
• 10% believe it’s true but are not too certain
• 14% believe it’s true but are not at all certain
• 4% believe it’s not true but are not at all certain
• 4% believe it’s not true but are not too certain
• 6% are fairly certain it is not true
• 8% are absolutely certain it is not true

I’m surprised 14% are fairly or absolutely certain that Jesus never existed.

AP report at Stuff:

Indonesian police say a civil servant who posted “God does not exist” on Facebook faces a maximum penalty of five years behind bars for blasphemy. …

Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million, recognises the right to practice five other religions. But atheism is illegal.

Atheism is illegal?

Do they also prosecute people for talking about evolution? Or gravity?

What sort of a supreme being needs laws to force people to believe in him? If there is a supreme being, I suspect he is very ashamed of Indonesia.

Sadly all religions have fanatics. Of course the proportion of a religion who are fanatics is not the same in each religion, but here’s an example of some in Israel:

A shy 8-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel’s latest religious war.

Naama Margolese is a ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls school for fear of ultra-Orthodox extremists who have spat on her and called her a whore for dressing “immodestly.”

Anyone who calls an eight year old girl a whore should be ashamed of themselves, because their God most definitely will be.

The girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.

The ultra-Orthodox consider the school, which moved to its present site at the beginning of the school year, an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, claiming their very presence is a provocation.

No, firing guns is a provocation. Yelling whore at eight year olds is provocation. Going to school is not.

The televised images of Naama sobbing as she walked to school shocked many Israelis, elicited statements of outrage from the country’s leadership, sparked a Facebook page with nearly 10,000 followers dedicated to “protecting little Naama” and a demonstration was held in her honour. As the case has attracted attention, extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.

“Who’s afraid of an 8-year-old student?” said Sunday’s main headline in the leading Yediot Ahronot daily.

Beit Shemesh’s growing ultra-Orthodox population has erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the pavements, dispatched “modesty patrols” to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders.

Great to read of the response from most normal Israelis. The fanatics sound like they would be happy living with the Taliban.

Naama’s case has been especially shocking because of her young age and because she attends a religious school and dresses with long sleeves and a skirt. Extremists, however, consider even that outfit, standard in mainstream Jewish religious schools, to be immodest.

Maybe a hajib?

Protesters held signs reading, “Free Israel from religious coercion,” and “Stop Israel from becoming Iran.”

The abuse and segregation of women in Israel in ultra-Orthodox areas is nothing new, and critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye.

The ultra-Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics – two such parties serve as key members of the ruling coalition. They receive generous government subsidies, and police have traditionally been reluctant to enter their communities.

Worth remembering this story, when our own extremists advocate getting rid of a threshold for MMP, so we would end up like Israel (which has been increasing their threshold).

A couple of people have commented to me that they are finding the daily general debate threads are being dominated by religious debates, which of course tend to never get resolved.

Their suggestion was that we have two general debate posts a day. One “General Religious Debate” and one “General Debate”, with the latter out of bounds for religious comments and debates.

I don’t spend a lot of time in General Debates myself, so unsure how much of an issue this is, and whether the proposed solution is necessary or preferred. On the face of it, it seems sensible and in fact it mirrors what we did on Usenet many years ago – set up a nz.soc.religion alongside nz.general.

I am currently reading Tony Flannery (ed) Responding to the Ryan Report (2009, Columba Press, Dublin) as I have been asked to help review it.

The Ryan Report was the report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse which sent shockwaves throughout Ireland, as it detailed an incredible number of allegations of physical and sexual abuse in Irish Catholic institutions. The fallout for the Catholic Church has been far worse in Ireland than in other countries (US, Australia, NZ) where similar reports have been published. Many elderly nuns don’t wear a habit in public anymore, for fear of being spat on or assaulted – whether or not they are involved with any of the institutions mentioned in the Report, and whether or not they have ever had anything to do with child care.

The book is written as an attempt to broaden the debate about abuse in the Church. The authors are Catholic, but none are apologists for what happened. They simply try to examine the problem from different angles: why it happened, how to avoid such things happening in the future, what aspects of church teaching might have led to this. The examination of centuries of oppressive teaching on sexuality is particularly telling.

It has always bothered me that church leaders (from the Catholic church and others) withdraw from PR problems. It is easier to resign as an expression of apology rather than defend yourself against false allegations. It is easier not to apologise, for fear of looking like you did something wrong. It is easier not to talk to the media, for fear that they will twist your words and use leading questions to make you say something you didn’t mean. It is easier to pay compensation than fight a legal battle. One author puts it particularly well:

Because the thinkers in the church had run away from the challenging possibilities of electronic media, nobody was available to it, throughout the perfect storm of the child abuse story, to analyse the economic circumstances which caused an influx of grievously unfit people into ministry, to delineate the power relationships regnant within big church institutions which drew sexual abusers to them or to discuss the group dynamics which turn good intentions into bricks on the road to hell.

This is from my favourite chapter so far – it discusses how the Church has failed to engage in the opportunities given to it by electronic and visual media, and has been left powerless in the face of the publication of the Report, and the media attention given to victims.

This is in no way saying that the Report contains dishonest accounts; nor that victims don’t have a right to be heard. It simply attempts to explain the deafening silence from the Church. It is a silence which has prevented unconditional apologies and debates over constructive reform. But it is one created by years of avoiding the mainstream and retreating into the shell of the Church – a far cry from the centuries of missionaries harnessing new technologies to spread their message. Books like this are good, but they’re no substitute for engaging in the debate eight months ago in mainstream media. This failure is, and will continue to be, the major contributor to the demise of Catholicism unless something changes.

The ODT editorial:

Central Auckland might not be Iraq or Afghanistan but it has been the scene of extremist religious reaction.

It was perfectly reasonable for certain churches and for various individuals to express their displeasure and even horror at what they saw as unsuitable or blasphemous in the Joseph and Mary billboard.

But the man who painted over it and the woman who attacked it with a knife are intolerant religious fanatics.

As such they are dangerous. In the name of their God they saw it as their right, even their obligation, to break the law and damage property.

The point I made.

While their actions are clearly of a different ilk to the suicide bombers of 9/11 or of a Baghdad market place, the fundamental impulse is the same. In the righteous name of God, they felt called to do their duty.

I agree. The moment you think doing God’s duty puts you above the law, it is a slippery slope.

But do the very values of the West contain the seeds of their own destruction? Is tolerance – and so-called “progressive” Christianity for that matter – a licence for wishy-washy thinking, policy and behaviour? Do the fanatics and the intolerant simply take advantage of weakness? Are the institutions and principles of democracy callously abused by ideologues for their own ends? These are dilemmas which liberal democracies face.

These are the concerns that echo through modern Western Europe as immigration swells the numbers from cultures and beliefs where ethics like individual human rights are far from sacrosanct.

The way forward has to be to ensure pride in the basic values that underpin democratic society and to defend them with vigour.

It means being prepared to be tolerant of different cultures and different beliefs but intolerant when aspects of those cultures and beliefs threaten the core on which Western democracies are based. Already, countries, institutions and individuals have been bullied over freedom of speech, with the most stark example the furore over the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

And the answer is to defend freedom of speech, not to applaud those who would deny it in Auckland.

It has been amazing to see the intolerance on display by some extremist Christians. They have applauded the destruction of a church’s private property, because they don’t like the message on display.

It is only a small way removed from the Islamic extremists who burnt down an Embassy, because they didn’t like the cartoons of a newspaper in a country. Of course that was a more extreme act, but what they have in common is both sets of people think their God allows them to break the law to try and suppress a message or image they do not approve of. It is the thin end of theocratic rule.

There are many legitimate ways people could take action against the billboard of St Matthew-in-the-City. They include:

• Complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (as Family First did)
• Protest outside St Matthews
• Put up your own billboard with an alternative message
• Lobby for the leadership of St Matthews to be disciplined or sacked by the church hierarchy (if possible)
• Try and have the entire parish booted out of the Anglican Church

But instead the nutters have won, with their campaign of destruction:

After the latest attack, by an elderly woman with a knife last night, the church said the billboard would not be replaced.

The Vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City, Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was “attacked by a knife-wielding Christian fanatic who was then apprehended by a group of homeless people who care about our church. Later in the evening another group of fanatics ripped it down.

I wonder how the fanatics would feel if someone threw bricks through all the windows at their local church, because someone doesn’t like their message.

It isn’t far removed from the morons who vandalise Jewish graves because they don’t like Judaism.

There is no right in New Zealand not to be offended by a religious message. If you are offended, then tough. Either take action under the law, or lump it. But you do not have the right to destroy private property of a church, because you are offended by their message.

But for all those who cheer on the extremists and vandals, well don’t cry out for sympathy when the same happens to your church. I mean if the Catholic Church beatifies Pope Pius XII, then it must be legitimate for Jewish activists to vandalise Catholic cathedrals to protest such an offensive move (Pius XII refused to publicly condemn the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews), if you think it is legitimate for Christian activists to vandalise St Matthews billboard.

CNN report:

A Turkish television show is offering contestants what it claims is the “biggest prize ever” — the chance for atheists to convert to one of the world’s major religions.

The show, called “Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor,” or “Penitents Compete,” features a Muslim imam, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Buddhist monk attempting to persuade 10 atheists of the merits of their religion, according to CNN Turk.

If they succeed, the contestants are rewarded with a pilgrimage to one of their chosen faith’s most sacred sites — Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for converts to Judaism, a trip to Tibet for Buddhists and the chance to visit Ephesus and the Vatican for Christians.

I hope they show it here, along with the audience reaction shots!

Hat Tip: Andrew Bolt