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 Comments Off on Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society @ Auckland University this Monday
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
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Matt on the Waitangi Tribunal, Confessional Confidence on “The Panel” – with Craig Heilmann
July 20th, 2012 Comments Off on Matt on the Waitangi Tribunal, Confessional Confidence on “The Panel” – with Craig Heilmann
If you tuned in to Radio Rhema at 11:45am (NZ time) on 19 July 2012 you would have heard this blog’s Matthew Flannagan and Craig Heilmann discuss topical issues such as the latest with the Waitangi Tribunal and whether priests should disclose crimes to police after confession, among other issues, on “The Panel” on Pat Brittenden mornings. You […]
Tags: Craig Heilmann · Pat Brittenden · Radio Rhema · The Panel