DAC

My challenge is still unanswered. "Tell me what is more rational about the secularist approach than the religious approach. My Christian understanding does not have an irrational beginning, an irrational orderliness, nor an irrational origin of life. Nor for that matter am I irrational in deciding to believe in God. He has given ample evidence to make that decision completely reasonable. He’s also explained why so many people do not want to consider that evidence. So what is more rational about secularism?" Show me that it makes more sense, don't just ask me to accept it on blind faith.

No, I have replaced blind faith with reasonable faith. Let me say that there are a number of medical doctors (and science doctors) in my congregation. The medical doctors would all agree that medical science is not nearly as absolute as you make it out to be. There is a far greater element of going by faith than you suggest. But arguing that would take away from the point. Let me try instead a courtroom analogy. A man is charged with some offence. The jurors listen to the presentation of the evidence. Rarely if ever is the evidence such that it is absolutely certain, proven beyond any vague possibility of error that the man committed the crime. Jurors are to look for evidence that goes beyond reasonable doubt. I believe that we have that kind of "proof" for the authenticity of the Bible and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, enough to make it reasonable to put your trust in him. And when you turn to him in faith, you find abundant confirmation.

takeanumber, I begin to think you are hammering this, not because you think it is true, but because you hope you will persuade the Conservatives to divide again. The PCs effectively purged the social conservatives from their party, by marginalizing them, refusing to allow them any part in definition of policy, doing their best to exclude them from running, and muzzling them if they ran and won. The result of that was Reform, and the total collapse of the PCs. If the same path is pursued again, the result can be expected to be the same. Closing your eyes to that reality does not get us anywhere in these discussions.

So far as I know, it's usually taken to be a man and woman who are married, and their children if they have any. I think it's a pretty short tradition in a limited part of the world. The real traditional family would be what we call the extended family. It includes grandparents, perhaps great grandparents, possibly aunts and uncles and their children, all lving, if not in the same home, in a fairly close area. That means child care is never a problem!

That hits the problem we face dead centre. There are no meaningful checks and balances in our present government, unless we have minority government. The design of our system put two serious checks on the PM’s power. The first was that he had to maintain the confidence of parliament. If a government measure was defeated, the government fell. That protection for the people was destroyed by the practice of compulsory voting the party line. It works only if there are free votes on all issues. The second check was the Senate. When it was established an appointed body of normally older, experienced people carried a lot of moral authority. The Senate was balanced by region rather than by population, to give it a different slant on issues. With the growth of the idea that the will of the people is absolute, an unelected Senate lost its moral authority, and became more and more unable to check the Commons. If it rejected legislation, the government would scream about it thwarting the will of the people - & everybody bought into that nonsense. The easy check to restore today is likely the Senate. There is a growing frustration with an ineffective, but costly upper house, which is mainly a place to reward the party faithful. So there may be a willingness to do something. Appointment of Senators for a fixed term by provincial governments would be an inexpensive way to change the Senate. It would also break the pattern of Senators being loyal to the PM or party that appointed them. Their loyalty would be to their provincial government. As representatives of the provinces, they would carry a lot more moral authority to challenge the government of the day. The alternative, of course, is election of Senators. But if that is combined with federal elections, the Senate is very likely to match the Commons in its makeup, and the federal party considerations would be too important. I think we should reform the Senate, not can it. The biggest weakness in our government today is the absolute authority of the PM. A strong Senate would cut that back. Of course, requiring all votes to be free votes would cut it even more.

Yes. & my newspaper's report seems to suggest that in this case the discovery was almost a lucky accident. They were checking, but could easily have missed this.

LM has a point worth considering. True. But the problem is that Red Tories do even worse in this land. Most who support their moral views favour the Liberal or NDP economic views. Most who share their economic views find it impossible to hold their noses and vote for their moral views. Further, I'd suggest the real test of Harper and the Conservative party will come in the next election, when they've had a chance to hold a convention, and hammer out an agreed on official policy.

Think of it in terms of dealing with your doctor. Before your doctor tells you that you need an operation, he explains that your arteries are plugged and if you don't do something about it you're going to die. Of course most reasonable Christians don't start out screaming to strangers, "You're about to die if you don't accept this message." For one thing, we think it's a good idea to try to establish some credibility, first, preferably by the effect of a changed life.

Digby, I haven't tried to stop your witness. Nor for that matter has anybody else. In fact the unbelievers in this discussion have been exceedingly patient with your ranting. What I have tried to do, both in private communication, and in the public forum when you rejected that, is to get you to give a better witness. Think of Priscilla and Aquila taking Apollos aside to help him to understand better, so he would be a better agent of God.

You are buying into a popular misconception. The secularist as much as the religious person has beliefs which underlie his thinking. Both secularists and religious people can be utterly irrational. And both can also be very rational. The difference between them does not lie in the way they reason, but in their presuppositions. Let me illustrate with the two views of origins (I realize there are many variations on the theme, but I'll use the two most common). Christians and those of other major religions believe that God (whichever God they serve) created the universe, and gave it certain rules by which it operates. Modern science rose in the West, largely because Christians believed it was a good thing to examine the orderly world God made and try to understand it. Many of the best scientific "reasoners" in our history, right up to the present day, have been fervent Christians. Secularists believe that the universe began with a primordial atom, which then exploded (the big bang). They have no idea where that atom came from, or why it exploded. They believe that by purely random accidents, the universe as we know it developed to be an orderly place. Although ever since Pasteur, the first law of biology has been that life comes from life, not from unliving matter, secularists believe that somewhere back in prehistory life formed by purely accidental combinations, and through billions of further accidents (mutations) formed us. They have no evidence to say that the formation of life was not guided by intelligence (God). It’s a blind faith assumption. They have no explanation for origins. They simply on blind faith deny that their primordial atom came from God. They have no explanation for why the physical “laws” which we can discern in this universe exist. They take it on blind faith that it just happened by accident. Tell me what is more rational about the secularist approach than the religious approach. My Christian understanding does not have an irrational beginning, an irrational orderliness, nor an irrational origin of life. Nor for that matter am I irrational in deciding to believe in God. He has given ample evidence to make that decision completely reasonable. He’s also explained why so many people do not want to consider that evidence. So what is more rational about secularism?

Interesting analysis, MS. 1 slip I noted. The Canada seat figures for the NDP got put in as the BC results too. I'm sure you'd love to see the NDP elect 19 in BC, but ...

Does the West want out? No. I was born and raised there, and most of my family are still there. The West does not want out, today. At the same time, there is a wide-spread sense of alienation. On another political web-site, a discussion of Harper's proper future came up with the almost unanimous sentiment that a Western leader could not be elected PM. I don't think the writers were westerners. I've seen similar, though not as extreme, suggestions on the Mapleleafweb, here. That expresses the cause of Western alienation. It is the sense that the West is excluded from having a meaningful role in the government of this land. They've changed the system to ease the effect, now, but often when I was young, when our polls closed in Saskatchewan, the radio announced that the government had already been decided before one Western vote had been counted. When that is the case (and this election we have a government which was chosen almost entirely in the East) two things happen. 1. The ruling group feels no need to pay attention to the West's concerns, because they can be re-elected with hardly a seat in the West. (We all know that their principle concern is getting re-elected, not serving the country.) 2. Whether or not the government pays attention to Western concerns, the West feels that it doesn't, because they know the government doesn't need them. That means there is a wide sense of alienation. At this point separation is not a real issue. But if that alienation is supported by the way "business" is done in government, it could lead to a meaningful separatist movement. Part of being a country is being concerned for everybody in it, even those with whom you have the least in common.

Good point. One analysis I saw claimed that the real split in the election was not provincial but urban/rural. I suspect there is at least a large element of that.

It's called vote splitting. In case you didn't notice, but the Con vote, if you added the PC vote and the Alliance vote from the last election, they didn't equate. In fact: it was way down. Where did the red tory vote go? I noticed, but I also noticed that the full spectrum present Conservative party got a whole lot more votes that either part of it did before, and 3-4 times the seats that the Red Tory PC party did in the previous election. Red Tories alone are not much of an alternative to the Liberals. A Conservative party that welcomes all conservatives fully (that means they have a chance to run for office and even to try for PM) is a real alternative. And it shows in the results.

Black Dog, I can't blame you for being irritated at Digby, but you should be a little careful to get your facts straight. For a start, the writings in the Old Testament were in Hebrew, and the most extreme views of those who have studied them recognize that most of them, at least, were put down in writing at some time close to the times they describe. We have Hebrew manuscripts of them dating back to well before the time of Christ. Greek scholars aren't in it. Well, I suppose you could call Luke and Paul Greek scholars. The New Testament was in Greek originally, and while there was a time that people argued that parts of it had been written as much as a couple of centuries after Christ, that's long gone. The worst critics admit that most of it at least was written in the first generation. They may not believe it, but they recognize the timing. Translation doesn't have much to do with it. If you're suggesting inaccuracy, you'll find surprising consistency, if you check out the translations. The worst of them, taken as a whole, is a reliable guide to the original. And for the record, I'm afraid you're mistaken in your view that it won't give us the answers, even if the answers it gives are not spelled out the way Digby thinks. But again, that's another topic.

Wake up, takeanumber. How many seats have the red tories won in the last 3 elections? The Conservative downfall began 15 years ago when the red tories (in your words) spat in the face of the social conservatives, & said, "We want your votes, but we don't want you in our party". So Reform was erected ... and before long the red tories party was toast.

Memories here seem very short. The PC party in recent years squeezed out the social conservatives, saying, we want your vote, but you have to shut up, and you can't run for office. Remember what happened? The social conservatives said, "We don't want to be part of a party which is intolerant of us". The result was the formation of Reform, and then the Alliance. The consequence was almost the disappearance of the PCs. Of course there were other factors, but that was the biggest of them all. Now they've gotten back together as a party which tolerates social conservatives and social moderates, sharing a conservative economic and political outlook. In their first try, in an election called before they'd even had a convention to hammer out policy, they didn't make it to power. So the doomsayers cry, "Away with the social conservatives!" Skip the fact that when the election was called everybody was talking Liberal majority. CBC commented that Harper and the new party were to be commended on how well they had done, with so little time to prepare for this election. Personally, I think the crocodile tears for the Conservatives losing because of they presence of social conservatives are coming from the left, in the hope of wiping them out again.

Digby, if you were Ezekiel and sent by God, I would not ask you to shut up. But it is plain that you are not. I have read the passages you mentioned. What is more, I've studied them. I've also studied the history of people who, like you are doing, have grabbed a piece of Scripture that seems to fit our times and said, "See, that's what God was talking about". 100 years later they are only footnotes in history. The Bible tells us what it is talking about. At the end of John's gospel, we're told it was written so we could know Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us it gives us what we need to serve God thoroughly. It is not a future history book, other than in telling us that when the end comes (and nobody but God knows when that will be) Jesus will return and the dead will be raised for judgment. If you want to debate its interpretation, I'd suggest we do it off this forum. That's not what this forum is about. I'll be glad to try to explain in detail the problems with your interpretation, and listen to your arguments. But that's not here.

Just to keep it straight, a majority of voters rejected every party. ~62% rejected Liberals ~70% rejected Conservatives ~83% rejected NDP ~97% rejected Green You can't really count this way with the parties that didn't run candidates everywhere, so I suppose the Bloc can claim it's the only party which elected members which was not rejected by a large majority of Canadians.

Expect the liberals to try to find someone among the independent, Conservative or Bloc for House Speaker. Then they'll say, "See how open we are to the opposition having a strong role in government".

Of course. Is there any Canadian who doesn't do that at least daily? For a more serious reply, read John Stuart Mills essay "On liberty".

Grieving at the number of people who will vote for a gang that everybody knows is crooked and had ripped off the country unmercifully.

August1991 wrote I agree with you that social engineering by the State has severe problems. I favour as minimal a government as we can manage, because I believe government is inherently inefficient, and the exercise of power is a strong temptation to corruption. But I don't think my proposals were as much pro State intervention as you read them. My first suggestion to encourage stronger families was a revision of the tax code to remove the present added cost to marriage - that includes common law as well as formal marriage. Consider two people who each earn $15,000. The man gets a new job which pays him $30,000, so the woman quits her job, they marry, and begin to raise a family. The result is that their tax bill goes up, on the same combined income. Not only is he paying in a higher bracket, but they have lost several hundred dollars in their deductions. That is a disincentive to forming a family. The welfare system, if I understand it correctly, is even worse in this respect. I'm not asking for social engineering by the government, but that the government take away tax laws and welfare rules which make it advantageous for parents to live separately and not admit to being a family. That normally means the mother raises the children and they may not even know their father. My second suggestion was the only one which might be fairly accused of "social engineering". The proposal that social benefits be structured to ensure that two incomes aren't needed to support the family does move that direction. It's also the proposal I am most uncomfortable with. But what's a forum like this, if it's not a place to try on some of these ideas and see if they can be shot down? My third suggestion was again a proposal to diminish government interference, to back off the attempts to remove parental authority and avenues of discipline. So what do you think?

There I disagree with you. Drawing child porn is also a crime, I believe. The issue is only partly that filming it is a crime. There I disagree with you. Drawing child porn is also a crime, I believe. The issue is only partly that filming it is a crime. Read my previous post again. I specifically recognized that correlation does not imply causation. It simply shows that there is something common between homosexual behaviour and family problems, and it seems to me that is more than sufficient grounds to be wary. I'm not claiming grounds to make it a crime, but grounds to draw back from encouraging it. There are no such grounds shown here yet.A loving homosexual couple may well be as fit to parent as a loving heterosexual couple. There's no statistical way to say they're not. Michael, I'm not applying statistics here. If a heterosexual couple were part of a movement which included advocates of sexual intercourse between adults and children, I'd oppose their being permitted to adopt, too. I've heard one homosexual proposal (2 weeks ago, in response to conservative criticism) that they ought to give NAMBLA and groups like it the heave. But for years the homosexual movement has welcomed these perverts as part of them. That says something very negative. I don't believe in playing risky games with our children.

I could hardly agree more that lack of spirituality is the base issue, Michael. But I'm not suggesting paying people to be better parents. I'm suggesting removing present disincentives to forming a two parent family. At present, we penalize people for marrying! That does not help, but rather hinders.