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Howard's God squad.
1points
John Howard promotes his plan for employing chaplains in schools on the value of their role as counsellors, yet stipulates that people are to be hired not on the basis of their counselling skills or formal qualifications, but on the basis of their adherence to a particular set of religious beliefs.
Section 116 of the Australian Constitution says in part; "No religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth".
Secularity is also one of the three fundamentals upon which public education in Australia is founded. The original statement of principles, defined by Henry Parkes (later to be referred to as the "Father of Australian Federation" ) was "free, compulsory and secular" and was encoded in the first legislation to establish public schooling in Australia in "The Public Instruction Act" 1880. This Act formed the legislative basis for State system education, with amendments, until 1987. Under existing law, every child has a right to an education free of influence by sectarian interests.
There is no doubt that much valuable counselling work is done by chaplains in schools and this discussion should not detract from
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If children should not be subject to the influence of sectarian interests, then what about the influence of agnostocism - or aetheism? Or are those belief systems somehow ‘above’ all the others, and immune from scrutiny?
The delicious irony about those who scream from the top of the battlements for the separation of church and state is that the very notion is straight out of the Bible - “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…” in Matthew, and also in John where he tells Pilate to the effect that if His Kingdom was of this world, then legions of angels would be there to help Him.
This was way before the black and whites of 13th Century Italy, or Montesquiou and the French Revolution.
A question to all the secularists: if you take the Bible out of the equation in resolving how to run things - then how do you come up with separation of Church and State at all? You can point to Parkes and the like - but where did they get it from…their hat?
Right now its seems as though the secularists are bible bashers without even knowing it.
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Em
Atheism is a ‘religion’, just like NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.
I had not noticed any “screaming from the top of battlements” (until your post - which certainly had that flavour) but your priceless logic -’if there is no church - then how can you have separation of church and state?’ (nyehh - so answer THAT one, Mr. Smartypants!) is straight out of Monty Python! Too ridiculous to answer. It reminds me of a recent comment from a member of the Gun Lobby in USA - “it’s criminals who commit crime, not guns, so get rid of criminals and then there’ll be no more gun crime.” (But then again abject stupidity is compulsory in the USA). Then again, maybe there’s method in your madness - get rid of religion and then there’ll be no conflict between church and state. What do you say Em? Good thinking? If you think so, please tell us how we are going to get rid of religion - or maybe we should get rid of the state. It’s all too hard for (alledgedly) screaming, embattled bible-bashing”secularists” like me!
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Nevertheless, Em, in a spirit of reconciliation, let’s acknowledge where we are in agreement, which is that there should be separation of church and state. I say the reson for this is self-evident; your authority is that it says so in the Bible. Good.
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