As part of AUSA’s Human Rights week at the University of Auckland, and in association with Thinking Matters, Matt and I will be giving a free public lecture with Q&A on the topic “Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society” on Monday 12 September from 7-8.30pm in Clock Tower Lecture Room 032. The Facebook page for [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Public Policy'
Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society @ Auckland University this Monday
September 8th, 2011 No Comments
Tags: Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Events · Freedom of Religion · Human Rights · John Rawls · Rights and Freedoms · Separation of Church and State · Thinking Matters
Contra Mundum: Separating Church and State
September 2nd, 2011 87 Comments
Co-authored by Matthew and Madeleine Flannagan The late Philosopher Richard Rorty once described religion as a “conversation stopper”, something that polarises discussion and ends or prevents fruitful dialogue. Rorty was an advocate of, “the happy, Jeffersonian compromise that the Enlightenment reached with the religious. This compromise consists in privatizing religion — keeping it out of [...]
Tags: Contra Mundum · First Amendment · Investigate Magazine · Separation of Church and State · Separationism · Steven Smith · Thomas Jefferson · Wall of Separation
Career Choices: Our Version of Child Slavery
August 17th, 2011 48 Comments
The following appeared in a recent edition of Sunday News. As you read this, please bear in mind that what is described here is officially fictional. The line from the Commentariat is that this sort of thing never actually occurs and certainly could not exist. The official Commentariat talking points are that human beings are [...]
Tags: Welfare
No Special Rights, So . . . One Law for All
May 9th, 2011 4 Comments
We remain militantly critical of contemporary Maori ideology. We believe it excuses personal and family accountability by resorting to the fallacy of historical determinism: Maori, their leadership tells them, are victims of predatory exploitation by European or imperial powers; the significant cause of social and cultural and spiritual degradation amongst Maori stems from the unjust [...]
Tags: Justice · Māori Land · Restitution · Te Urewera National Park · Tuhoe
More Swamps than Christchurch: The Liquefaction of the Left
April 10th, 2011 11 Comments
One of the most destructive carnards concreted into the mind of greenism and environmentalism is the proposition that natural resources are fixed, finite, and limited. Once gone, they are gone forever. Therefore, conservation of said resources is a moral imperative. Statists warm to this proposition reflexively, that is, without thinking. To conserve on a grand [...]
Tags: Enviro Myths · Greens · Statist Mindset
The New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists and the Privileging of Secularism
December 20th, 2010 189 Comments
The New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists (“NZARH”) has a statement of aspirational ideals for the New Zealand state on their website. Entitled “The Tolerant Secular State” it is anything but. The first two sentences of the document exhibit a confusion which is inherent throughout (and commonly found in discussions of church and state): “The [...]
Tags: Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Free Exercise · Freedom of Religion · Harry Potter · Jurisprudence · Lord Voldemort · NZARH · Paul Rishworth · Religion in Public Life · Rights and Freedoms · Secularism · Steven Smith
The Separation of Church and Self: Rethinking Separationism
December 16th, 2010 119 Comments
Is it just for a pluralistic society to ground its public policy on religious premises? What role should religion play in such a society? Debate over questions like these has figured in theology, philosophy, political science, jurisprudence and popular culture for centuries. In contemporary Western pluralistic society the debate continues. Even for those unfamiliar with [...]
Tags: Christopher Eberle · Coercion Test · Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Endorsement Test · Freedom of Religion · Gerald Gaus · James Madison · John Rawls · Jürgen Habermas · Justice Scalia · Law Studies · Lee v Weisman · Lemon Test · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philip Devine · Philip Quinn · Philosophy of Religion · Political Philosophy · Religion in Public Life · Richard Rorty · Robert Audi · Separationism · Stephen Carter · Terence Cuneo · Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Middleton Grange, Free Exercise and the Gay Rights Movement UPDATED
July 26th, 2010 284 Comments
Over at GayNZ.com’s Proclamations of the Red Queen blog, Craig Young is in a celebratory mood. Middleton Grange, a Reformed Evangelical Christian school has been forced by law to pay reparations and have their management undergo “human rights education” because they dismissed a netball coach on the grounds that he openly engaged in homosexual conduct. Middleton [...]
Tags: Craig Young · Free Exercise · Freedom of Religion · GayNZ.com · Homosexual Conduct · Human Rights · Human Rights Commission · Middleton Grange · Rights and Freedoms
Epistemology 101: Clash of Authorities Part III
July 24th, 2010 26 Comments
This three-part blog series is essentially the talk I gave at the recent Clearing the Air Forum, which was entitled “Discovering Truth in the Synthesis of Science and Faith.” The audience was comprised of scientists, church leaders, journalists and other interested parties so this is a fairly lay introduction to epistemology. In my first post, [...]
Tags: AGW · Alvin Plantinga · Climate Change · Epistemology · Faith and Reason · Science and Religion · Scientism
Epistemology 101: Science, Faith and Authority Part II
July 21st, 2010 12 Comments
This three-part blog series is essentially the talk I gave at the recent Clearing the Air Forum, which was entitled “Discovering Truth in the Synthesis of Science and Faith.” The audience was comprised of scientists, church leaders, journalists and other interested parties so this is a fairly lay introduction to epistemology. In my first post, [...]
Tags: AGW · Clear · Climate Change · Epistemology · Faith and Reason · Greg Dawes · John Locke · Keisha Castle-Hughs · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Richard Dawkins · Roy Clouser · Science and Religion