How bad are things in Australia, really?

[owheelj]

Originally Posted by Logic please

A "minority" of people are directly "affected" by sexuality-based discrimination, including marriage equality prohibitions. Does the majority remaining "unaffected", make that situation OK?

At what point have I said it's ok? Surely I've repeatedly said that there are problems, and that we should work to fix them.

[owheelj]

Originally Posted by Crocodile

You mean lying to children and programming them into little drones for Jesus is an essential public service?

No, I mean things like "Bethlehem House" in Hobart, that provides accommodation for homeless people, or the Salvation Army Legal Service in country Victoria, which provides free legal service in places where there is no other free alternatives.

And again, I'm not saying that those things are perfect, or that there aren't problems with them, but they are better than nothing, and the government would either have to pay for those services, or pay for the consequences of not having them, if they went away.

[Loki]

Originally Posted by owheelj

No, I mean things like "Bethlehem House" in Hobart, that provides accommodation for homeless people, or the Salvation Army Legal Service in country Victoria, which provides free legal service in places where there is no other free alternatives.

And again, I'm not saying that those things are perfect, or that there aren't problems with them, but they are better than nothing, and the government would either have to pay for those services, or pay for the consequences of not having them, if they went away.

Perhaps some of the objection is that the government (through the taxes of all Australians) is already heavily subsidising these charities?

If the definition of charity was amended to remove the free ride for "religious purposes" and the government took complete responsibility for charities which provide useful secular services yet are currently run as branches of religion I suspect the overall budget position would still be significantly improved.

To recap, my opposition is not to charities which provide useful secular services, my opposition is to a definition of religion which includes any donation which can be spun as furthering religion and to murky accounting practices which do not differentiate the ultimate use to which donations are applied. Why should my taxes be subsidising church building programs and missionary offensives against other countries?

[owheelj]

Originally Posted by Loki

Perhaps some of the objection is that the government (through the taxes of all Australians) is already heavily subsidising these charities?

If the definition of charity was amended to remove the free ride for "religious purposes" and the government took complete responsibility for charities which provide useful secular services yet are currently run as branches of religion I suspect the overall budget position would still be significantly improved.

To recap, my opposition is not to charities which provide useful secular services, my opposition is to a definition of religion which includes any donation which can be spun as furthering religion and to murky accounting practices which do not differentiate the ultimate use to which donations are applied. Why should my taxes be subsidising church building programs and missionary offensives against other countries?

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I don't think it contradicts what I was saying, which is that *some* religious organisations do spend non-government money on providing services that the government would probably have to cover if they stopped doing it. Indeed one of the reasons our school funding system is not very good is because the Catholic schools often threaten the government that they'll close all their schools, which would cost the government billions, and so governments are unable to instigate meaningful education reforms in the private v public arena (see "The Stupid Country" by Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor).


But I think it's important to go back to the original question - which is what I was trying to answer;

"How bad are things in Australia, really?"

I think a better way of conceptualising this, than what I offered before (although it's essentially the same idea) is like this.

Consider a scale from 1 to 7. 1 is the worst religious theocracy you can imagine. 7 is the most atheistic or secular country you can imagine. On this scale, what number would you give Australia?

You could likewise put things in a more real grounding, and say that 1 is the worst country you can actually think of, and 7 is the best country you can think of. Greg Paul and Phil Zuckerman have actually tried to quantify that very question, so you can look at their work and see where they put Australia (which is where I would put us - ie. very close to 7).

Obviously there are conflicting issues with taking complex systems and trying to represent them on a line. Where do communist dictatorships that oppress religion fit, for example? But I think even with the problems with this method, it demonstrates clearly that things in Australia, are not very worse we are much closer to the good end of the scale then the bad end of the scale.

Of course, as I've stated in this topic in my first post, that doesn't mean things are perfect, it doesn't mean we should not worry about the space between where we are and the end of the scale, it doesn't mean there aren't religious problems, and it doesn't mean the problems shouldn't be addressed.

[Loki]

Originally Posted by owheelj

Indeed one of the reasons our school funding system is not very good is because the Catholic schools often threaten the government that they'll close all their schools, which would cost the government billions, and so governments are unable to instigate meaningful education reforms in the private v public arena (see "The Stupid Country" by Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor).

I guess the obvious contrast with your comment is to suggest (as several have already) that the problem with it is not that closing the Catholic schools would cost billions, but that they already cost us billions as we pay for most of it anyway and that the costs in non monetary terms (and the opacity of the education system to reform is but one example) are vastly more damaging than the monetary ones.

I feel it's the idea that as we have it better than a lot of other countries we should just shut up and live with it (whether that is the intent or not is another issue) is what people are kicking back at in this thread.

Where room for improvement exists then it should be striven for, regardless of how well-off we are and regardless of how we compare with others.

Any improvement in things here can and does have flow-on effects to other countries. How do you think secularism would be doing here if people in other countries had not also been railing against injustice? How would we be doing on any of the human rights issues which the world at large (well at least the developed world) has taken on (for example ending child labour, the vote for females and ending slavery (blackbirding in particular is relevant to our own history)), without the influence of other countries?

[owheelj]

I think the things you're talking about are complex, and can only really be speculated about. The point about Catholic schools is that the total government cost of having to provide public education for that number of children is far greater than the current costs of funding the Catholic schools, although in that book I mentioned, I recall there is debate about whether these are initial costs or upkeep costs - but that doesn't really matter - the point is that no Australian Government since the Catholics pulled this move on Gough have been able to afford to call their bluff.

The view that because things are worse somewhere else, that we should shut up and live with it is common in many issues; not just this one, and is a rather obvious logical fallacy. I definitely don't believe that, and would strongly oppose that view, which is why I've tried to make it clear I don't hold that view in many of the posts I've made in this topic. My view of everything comes from the philosophy from chess - don't make good moves, make the best move. The only time when not aiming for the best result in something is acceptable is when there is a trade off, and you have to aim for the best overall result at the expense of some of the components. Sometimes that is true of particular decisions relating to religion, but it obviously only applies to specific circumstances rather than something you could generalise about question such as this one.

The flow on effect argument is interesting, but hard to answer, because of how complex such things are. For example the US has a much more secular constitution and history to Australia and the UK, but has far more religious problems too. Is that just coincidence or is there a link? I think there can be positive and negative feedback from other countries. There's the famous work by a US psychologist (Jon Haidt maybe?) that showed that strong views polarise people. Ie. if you express strong anti-religious views, it will make people who hear these views and are somewhat pro-religious to express stronger pro-religious views than if you don't express yourself. So you can often end up with more extreme views on an issue then you'd have before the people interacted (by extreme, I just mean further away from the middle/average - not necessarily radical etc.). So lots of religious societies might become more reverent in their beliefs because of the push for secularism? I don't know. I suspect the net effect of campaigning for secularism in one country is positive for others, but it's hard to quantify.

Again though, the question was asking for a description of the position of religion in Australia, rather than a judgement on what we should be doing, and when I say that things aren't bad, I don't mean that we shouldn't take action - I'm president and founder of my university atheist society, on the Freethought University Alliance executive, was a member of the Secular Party etc. because I think we should be doing things, and because I think the consequence of what I'm doing is positive.

[Loki]

Good points OWheelj, a surprisingly broad topic once one gets into it.


*I can't find a popcorn smilie I like which isn't animated. I did try.

[wolty]

Marriage equality posts are now in..................Marriage Equality.