We vote for people to represent us - not to represent the Lord

When Kevin Andrews represented the Lord and not us

The first legal voluntary euthanasia in the world took place in the Northern Territory. Bob Dent calmly said goodbye to the world as he pushed a button on an apparatus which delivered into his blood circulation a series of three drugs. He died peacefully. He died with all his mental faculties intact. He died with dignity.

That was as far as it got. Through a private members bill, Kevin Andrews successfully worked to have the Northern Territory’s voluntary euthanasia decision overturned by the federal parliament.

He argued that:

• voluntary euthanasia may not be voluntary, ignoring the fact that volition is absolutely integral to Phillip Nitschke’s method as used by Bob Dent;
• palliative care is the viable alternative to suicide, ignoring the fact that Bob Dent and others commit suicide because their palliative care fails them;
• if an easy method of suicide was available, people who were not terminally ill would use it. Of what business is it of Andrews to keep people on Earth who don’t want to be here?   

Andrews was on God’s business. He and his colleagues believe that God does not approve of voluntary euthanasia. National surveys consistently show that at least 70 per cent of the public approve of adequately controlled voluntary euthanasia. Democratically elected people hijacked our democracy in support of their emotional attachment to a belief based on absolutely no evidence.

John Howard and Kevin Rudd mix it with the enlightened

In our fast-moving society, the once inspiring atmosphere created by gothic arches, organ music and stained glass windows is no longer enough. The new medium is the large auditorium and the electricity generated by up to 3,500 people holding up their arms and crying out to a big guy in the sky to make them lucky, while those on the stage work the crowd often to a throbbing musical beat.

In contrast to the usual indoctrination in classes spread over years, crowd dynamics fast-track the simplistic Pentecostal message. That message is sold as a quick-fix for a feeling-lost problem. In this context, discovering Jesus is somewhat analogous to a bachelor meeting a spinster at a dance.

The leaders of this new look say that they are simply being more relevant to people’s desires. They say that people don’t desire sacrifice as preached by the old church but really desire success and will obtain it by "discovering God’s amazing financial plan for you".

As expected, this eccentricity has been imported from the USA where 53 per cent of the population believe that God made Eve from one of Adam’s ribs and the president prays daily for guidance in his war plans. Hillsong in Sydney now has a greater attendance than the total for all the Anglican churches in Australia.

John Howard got up on stage at Hillsong in front of a huge euphoric congregation and sucked in the atmosphere as if he was the star performer at a rock concert. The man was not there just to promote himself. Here he was at home. This was his mob.

Howard was just being Howard, but Kevin Rudd got up on the stage of the CityLife congregation in Melbourne. He claims that he has mixed feelings about the Pentecostal approach. So why was he there at all? He admitted it to Tony Jones on the ABC - he wanted the Pentecostals to think nice things about Labor.

The Family First Party may score a low primary vote, but picks up many preferences from voters who are unaware of its strong Pentecostal connection.

In Sydney there is the state seat of Greenway and the federal seat of Mitchell. Both sitting Liberal members are prominent members of the Hillsong congregation.

The closest we came to institutionalising baseless propaganda

Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen (of Fitzgerald Inquiry fame) who thought aboriginal mythology to be laughable (but very unlaughable if it got in the way of a bulldozer) and who had concluded that Nobel Lauriat Archbishop Tutu was a witchdoctor, had a crack at making creation science available in the Queensland public education system.

This was no joke. The proposal came out of a state premier’s mouth. This was a threat to the core of our free-thinking society. Once baseless propaganda is sanctified by the state, then penalties for heresy handed down by the courts will eventually follow. Many who heard Joh's proposal were struck with the same cold fear their parents must have felt when Darwin was bombed.

There is not one plank in the creation scientist's platform which cannot be demolished by genuine science. There could hardly be a more dangerous move than to have rubbish publicly funded as a serious scientific study. Fortunately, Joh's dream got no further than his support for a weird cure for cancer.

Evidence shaped to support scripture at taxpayer’s expense

Faith-based schools which must teach science subjects to prepare their students for state exams are verbally passing on a message to their biology students which is not in the approved texts.

In an effort to salvage the concept of the soul which is fundamental to all religions, the verbal message is that the evolution of the species is one explanation and special creation of the species is another. The student is left to choose. The implication here is that there is a 50-50 chance that the evolution concept could be wrong.

The chance that the principle of the evolution concept could be wrong is so vanishingly small as to be, for all practical purposes, zero. At our expense, the students are being manipulated to accept fiction as fact.

The only reason that religions have such an investment in schools is that the church elders desire to manipulate young unquestioning minds. Howard and Rudd see nothing wrong with this.

A by-product of having scientifically illiterate parliamentarians is that scientific researchers have to beg for funding.

Finally – let us move to get rid of a silly ritual

When a parliamentary session opens, the prime minister leads with the Lord’s Prayer. In this building which is the product of awesome technology arising out of discoveries in pure science, the members can be heard reciting an ancient writing in the hope that some ethereal being is listening.

You can have no thought or feeling unless millions of particles move in your body. They might be molecules, atoms or sub-atomic particles such as electrons. While the parliamentarians may not know it, their praying is an appeal that God will move particles around in their brains in such a way that good decisions will be made.

The sole reason that we have material existence is that the interplay of the physical laws remain absolutely inviolate. It is all the rules obeyed exactly - or it is nothing. This is the essence of reality. It is the holy tabernacle of physics.

If the creator was to stick a metaphorical finger into the mechanism and move particles in a politician’s brain contrary to where the laws of physics dictated that they were to go, we would not have any inviolate mechanism. Like a pinprick to a balloon, the creator would have undone "his" grand plan. No more Universe!