Here’s an interesting one. Recently it became known that a female police officer in Auckland New Zealand had been earning extra money on the side by working as a prostitute.

But wait, prostitution is legal in New Zealand now thanks to outspoken Gay Member of parliament Chris Carter, who was also behind the introduction of the Civil Unions Act, which essentially created same-sex marriage in New Zealand. Since it is legal, there’s no problem, right? I mean that must mean there’s nothing wrong with it, or at least that New Zealand society doesn’t see anything wrong with it.

No. This is yet another illustration that the fast-moving liberalise-everything-as-fast-as-we-can Labour Government is just out of step with the people who have to deal with the consequences of their policies. People like the police force. “Police media spokesman Jon Neilson said Deputy Commissioner Lyn Provost had decided sex work was an incompatible second job for the officer.” Incompatible, huh? It’s an interesting state of affairs when the police are setting the example for the Government. It’s also not something that should have to happen, nor would it happen if the Government actually thought for longer than ten minutes before putting the anti-conservative agenda (something never to be confused with a Classical Liberal agenda) into overdrive.

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Jason at the Sci Phi Show is hosting an interview he conducted recently with Alvin Plantinga (pictured). When asked how he managed that, his reply was simple: He emailed Dr Plantinga with the request, and Plantinga said yes. Who’da thought?
The interview is on the subject of Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism.

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I saw it on TV tonight – Tony Blair and George W. Bush talking candidly at the G8 summit, with a microphone accidentally left on. The whole world got to hear Bush say “Yo Blair” as he greeted the British Prime Minister. They also got to hear that Blair had given Bush a sweater as a gift, which he claimed to have knitted. Interesting.

But of course the real highlight is that Bush said the s word! Okay, so it won’t get him into the kind of trouble it got Nixon into. In fact, most internet news sources aren’t even editing it like Nixon’s [EXPLETIVE DELETED] comments. But it was a little unexpected, even if he was talking about Assyria getting Hezbollah to “stop that s**t.” I suppose somebody could always splice it up a little and have Bush saying “Yo Blair, thanks for the threads. When are Hezbollah gonna stop wit dat s**t?”

But that aside, I can’t see what the fuss is about. They are saying to each other exactly what they say to the world about their views on the middle east. Check out the poll on the CNN page at the link above. The question is asked – whose reputation is damaged more by the incident? So far, the majority of people have voted for the fourth option – the reputations of both were enhanced! Well I guess if anything it shows that right or wrong, they aren’t duplicitous.

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Just imagine that a Christian man in New York was convicted of killing his sister in an utterly brutal stabbing and cutting her throat, because she fell in love with a member of the wrong caste according to her church. Then, imagine that this happens so often in Christian circles that there was a name for it – Honour killings.

How would this phenomenon cast Christianity in the eyes of the world? Even if someone could show you that the Bible doesn’t teach that this practice is OK, what if it was still true that this practice was uniquely widespread in Christianity, and that it was justified by Christian communities around the world?

Samaira Nazir was stabbed 18 times by her brother and cousin, and as she tried to escape, they dragged her back and cut her throat, while her mother watched, consenting to what was being done. Her Muslim family, living in England, considered this an acceptable thing to do, because she fell in love with a man outside of her caste. This happens so frequently in Muslim familes around the world that there is a name for it – Honour killings.

These events are not rare. In the first 11 months of 2005 in Pakistan alone, there were 260 honour killings carried out by Muslim families that were documented by the Pakistan human rights commission. Many are not reported at all, simply because those who know of them approve of them.

I agree with the condemnation of homosexual (or heterosexual, for that matter) Catholic priests who molest children. But why do we hear so much about it, but the anti-religious left don’t come out guns blazing calling Islam a religion of violence, sexism and terror? Let’s cut the crap, the difference between Muslims who slaughter their women like animals and those of us who don’t isn’t merely sociological or economic, it’s religious.

We’re scaredy cats. People who insult Islam get people marching with placards calling for our public beheading. Muslims who get upset blow people into pieces of pet food. So what’s the message here? Let’s start calling spades spades. The group that has lobbied harder for gender equality, an end to slavery and civil liberty than any other religious group can still be tarred and feathered as facists and abusers, but the religion in which a man can slit his daughter’s throat or pump her full of lead to save the honour of his family name is too spooky to condemn?

Stop pussyfooting around. I’m not a fan, but Anne Coulter had it right about Islamic nations. “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Don’t start flapping those pinko wrists around and lisping about how terrible that is. As it is, they hack heads off if people convert, and they butcher their sisters and daughters for the sake of their pride. Which is worse?

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Apparently, people other than conservative Christian scholars have noticed that Daniel Dennett’s analysis of the divide between religion and skepticism is shallow. See Jack Miles’ Review here.

Dennett sets out to tell us all that we need to break the spell of religion, and break it now. But so much of what he says ends up being more sauce than meat. For example, says Miles:

[I]ntellectual outbursts emotionally akin to “Let’s step outside and settle this, shall we?” keep intruding. Thus we read: “If theists would be so kind as to make a short list of all the concepts of God they renounce as balderdash before proceeding further, we atheists would know just which topics were still on the table, but, out of a mixture of caution, loyalty, and unwillingness to offend anyone ‘on their side,’ theists typically decline to do this.” Perhaps so, but then is Dennett prepared to perform a comparable triage for the favorite topics of his fellow atheists? Where do “we atheists” stand, for example, with regard to fellow atheist Howard Stern? We theists would like to know, if Dennett would be so kind, though we fear that out of a mixture of caution, loyalty and unwillingness to offend, he may pass over America’s most influential single atheist in silence.Truth to tell, this kind of game is depressingly easy to play, and it’s a rare student of religion who really wants to be drawn into it.

What’s got Dennett so riled up? Miles suggests that it’s because while skepticism has better arguments, it’s dying out anyway. That may well be how Dennett would choose to describe the state of philosophical affairs, but in light of the recent upsurge in religious belief rather than skepticism in philosophers of religion, this charge is more than a little difficult to maintain without serious misgivings. One sociological fact, however, is much harder to deny:

Fertility rates in the relatively secular blue states are 12 percent lower than in the relatively religious red states, according to Philip Longman in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy. In Europe, a similar correlation holds. As Longman writes: “Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively . . . are far more likely to live alone, or in childless, cohabitating unions, than those who answer negatively.” For the most secular cultures in the world, Longman predicts a temporary drop in absolute population as secular liberals die out and a concomitant cultural transformation as, “by a process similar to survival of the fittest,” they are demographically replaced by religious conservatives.

It’s amost enough to make you believe in Dominion Theology!

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