by Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
The Affordable Care Act (misnamed Obamacare) requires that church-related institutions such as hospitals, colleges and charities' health insurance programs cover contraceptive services. This has caused a ruckus among the Catholic bishops (though not the Catholic nuns) and some conservative evangelical leaders, who complain that the mandate violates their religious liberty. They conveniently overlook the fact that these institutions employ and serve vast numbers of women of every religious persuasion, AND, importantly, are generously subsidized by taxes extracted from Americans of every religious or nonreligious persuasion.
These theocrats seem to have this mantra or litany, "Give us your tax dollars but do not even think of imposing any regulations that might not be in sync with our medieval dogmas or our dubious religious liberty claims."
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Obama at the Prayer Breakfast
by Edd Doerr
On Feb 7 President Obama spoke at the annual prayer breakfast. Church-state separationists generally take a dim view of this affair, but since its start some 60 years ago presidents seem to be stuck with it. For Obama to decline to participate would create headaches he does not need.
For the most part his remarks were standard boilerplate, but at least he did include this: "All Americans -- whether religious or secular -- have a deep and abiding faith in this nation".
And, having referred to our diversity, he concluded: "All Americans -- men and women of different faiths and, yes, those of no faith that they can name -- are, nevertheless, joined together in common purpose, believing in something that is bigger than ourselves, and the ideals that lie at the heart of our nation's founding -- that as a people we are bound together."
Need I add that our nation's founders -- men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Paine -- were Enlightenment deists, or, as Leo Pfeffer put it in his 1958 book Creeds in Competition, "secular humanists".
On Feb 7 President Obama spoke at the annual prayer breakfast. Church-state separationists generally take a dim view of this affair, but since its start some 60 years ago presidents seem to be stuck with it. For Obama to decline to participate would create headaches he does not need.
For the most part his remarks were standard boilerplate, but at least he did include this: "All Americans -- whether religious or secular -- have a deep and abiding faith in this nation".
And, having referred to our diversity, he concluded: "All Americans -- men and women of different faiths and, yes, those of no faith that they can name -- are, nevertheless, joined together in common purpose, believing in something that is bigger than ourselves, and the ideals that lie at the heart of our nation's founding -- that as a people we are bound together."
Need I add that our nation's founders -- men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Paine -- were Enlightenment deists, or, as Leo Pfeffer put it in his 1958 book Creeds in Competition, "secular humanists".
Maxima Culpa
by Edd Doerr
On Monday evening, Feb 4, HBO broadcast the documentary film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. This absorbing, nearly two-hour film deals with the clergy sexual abuse of minors scandal in the Catholic church, zeroing in specifically on the drawn out Father Lawrence Murphy case in Wisconsin, the Father Walsh case in Ireland, Cardinal Law in Boston, and the ages long coverups reaching up the chain to the highest reaches of the Vatican itself. Among those interviewed in the documentary are Father Thomas Doyle, who has worked to expose the mess, Catholic writer Jason Berry, who exposed the abuse scandal in Louisiana years ago, retired Archbishop Weakland of Wisconsin, and NY Times writer Laurie Goodstein.
The film is too long and complex for me to adequately review here. But the film was shown in theaters last fall and is surely available. Yet it only scratches the surface. The NY Times, the National Catholic Reporter and other papers have written about the mess for years and piles of books have been written about it. I have reviewed a dozen of them, including two (in Spanish) by Spanish psychologist Pepe Rodriguez from 1995 and 2002 on the sex life of the clergy and the pedophile problem. (There is an old Spanish saying: "A priest is a guy whom everyone calls 'father', except his own children, who call him 'uncle'." -- "Un cura es un tipo que todos llaman padre, sino sus propios hijos, que le llaman tio".) The 2006 Greenhaven Press book Child Abuse reprinted my column "The Catholic Church Routinely Ignores Child Sexual Abuse by Clergy" from the Dec 2003 Humanist (from whose pages I have been barred since I left the AHA presidency a decade ago).
The Catholic bishops, who cannot be said to really represent the Catholic people, have been pushing for decades to get tax support in the US for their shrinking private school system (down from 5.5 million K-12 students in 1965 to two million today) through vouchers or tax credits, to roll back reproductive choice, and to impede all efforts for governments to deal with the overpopulation crisis. And now they are trying to block the Affordable Care Act's requirement that church-related charities, colleges and hospitals that serve large numbers of women of all religious persuasions be required to indirectly provide contraceptive services, even though these institutions are generously supported by taxes extracted from Americans of all religious persuasions. The Vatican is even trying to crack down on nuns who have disagreed with the bishops on public policy matters.
The clergy sexual abuse scandals and coverups (see the developments in Los Angeles recently) should help retard the bishops campaigns to impose their medieal theocratic views on Americans
of all persuasions.
On Monday evening, Feb 4, HBO broadcast the documentary film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. This absorbing, nearly two-hour film deals with the clergy sexual abuse of minors scandal in the Catholic church, zeroing in specifically on the drawn out Father Lawrence Murphy case in Wisconsin, the Father Walsh case in Ireland, Cardinal Law in Boston, and the ages long coverups reaching up the chain to the highest reaches of the Vatican itself. Among those interviewed in the documentary are Father Thomas Doyle, who has worked to expose the mess, Catholic writer Jason Berry, who exposed the abuse scandal in Louisiana years ago, retired Archbishop Weakland of Wisconsin, and NY Times writer Laurie Goodstein.
The film is too long and complex for me to adequately review here. But the film was shown in theaters last fall and is surely available. Yet it only scratches the surface. The NY Times, the National Catholic Reporter and other papers have written about the mess for years and piles of books have been written about it. I have reviewed a dozen of them, including two (in Spanish) by Spanish psychologist Pepe Rodriguez from 1995 and 2002 on the sex life of the clergy and the pedophile problem. (There is an old Spanish saying: "A priest is a guy whom everyone calls 'father', except his own children, who call him 'uncle'." -- "Un cura es un tipo que todos llaman padre, sino sus propios hijos, que le llaman tio".) The 2006 Greenhaven Press book Child Abuse reprinted my column "The Catholic Church Routinely Ignores Child Sexual Abuse by Clergy" from the Dec 2003 Humanist (from whose pages I have been barred since I left the AHA presidency a decade ago).
The Catholic bishops, who cannot be said to really represent the Catholic people, have been pushing for decades to get tax support in the US for their shrinking private school system (down from 5.5 million K-12 students in 1965 to two million today) through vouchers or tax credits, to roll back reproductive choice, and to impede all efforts for governments to deal with the overpopulation crisis. And now they are trying to block the Affordable Care Act's requirement that church-related charities, colleges and hospitals that serve large numbers of women of all religious persuasions be required to indirectly provide contraceptive services, even though these institutions are generously supported by taxes extracted from Americans of all religious persuasions. The Vatican is even trying to crack down on nuns who have disagreed with the bishops on public policy matters.
The clergy sexual abuse scandals and coverups (see the developments in Los Angeles recently) should help retard the bishops campaigns to impose their medieal theocratic views on Americans
of all persuasions.
Catholic League
by Edd Doerr
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is a conservative, pugnacious outfit dedicated to defending the Catholic Church leadership from any and all justified criticism from whatever quarter. Headed by the loud Rush Limbaugh-ish William Donohue, it gets far more publicity than is warranted. It runs expensive ads in the NY Times and tries to frighten timid souls from criticizing the hierarchy and its questionable activities. (My comment here has nothing to do with criticizing ordinary Catholics, who are pretty much like everyone else, or with theology.)
It is interesting to look at the folks listed on the League's letterhead as making up its Board of Advisers. The list includes Hadley Arkes, Brent Bozell, Linda Chavez (who, when she ran fo US Senate from Maryland, could not clarify whether she was Catholic or Jewish), Robert Destro (whom I have debated), Keith Fournier, Mary Ann Glendon (an overrated law prof), Alan Keyes (the clown who ran against Obama for senator from Illinois), Thomas Monaghan (founded Domino Pizza and the ultraconservative Catholic university, Ave Maria, in Florida), theologian Michael Novak, Russell Shaw ( a one time spokesman for the bishops and alleged Opus Dei member), school voucher promoter Paul Vitz, and threologian George Weigel.
Needless to say, the League speaks for only a minority of American Catholics.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is a conservative, pugnacious outfit dedicated to defending the Catholic Church leadership from any and all justified criticism from whatever quarter. Headed by the loud Rush Limbaugh-ish William Donohue, it gets far more publicity than is warranted. It runs expensive ads in the NY Times and tries to frighten timid souls from criticizing the hierarchy and its questionable activities. (My comment here has nothing to do with criticizing ordinary Catholics, who are pretty much like everyone else, or with theology.)
It is interesting to look at the folks listed on the League's letterhead as making up its Board of Advisers. The list includes Hadley Arkes, Brent Bozell, Linda Chavez (who, when she ran fo US Senate from Maryland, could not clarify whether she was Catholic or Jewish), Robert Destro (whom I have debated), Keith Fournier, Mary Ann Glendon (an overrated law prof), Alan Keyes (the clown who ran against Obama for senator from Illinois), Thomas Monaghan (founded Domino Pizza and the ultraconservative Catholic university, Ave Maria, in Florida), theologian Michael Novak, Russell Shaw ( a one time spokesman for the bishops and alleged Opus Dei member), school voucher promoter Paul Vitz, and threologian George Weigel.
Needless to say, the League speaks for only a minority of American Catholics.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Morality not dependent on behavior being unpredictable
By Mathew Goldstein
In the monthly WASH bulletin there is another article on free will titled "Free will and Hell" written by he coordinator of the Baltimore chapter. As before, it describes Daniel Dennett's perspectives as he discussed them at John Hopkins University. I will spare the readers a discussion of every one of my disagreements and agreements with that article in detail. Instead I will briefly comment on the start of the third paragraph which follows:
"A concept of free will is necessary for morality because no individual can predict exactly what another will do. Many human actions are based on internal motivations or patterns of neurons that can't be observed. The actions appear random to anyone who doesn't know the person. The behavior is not free in the sense of being undetermined by physical causes, but it is free in the sense of being unpredictable by a casual observer."
We are free provided that we are not compelled to act according to someone else's dictate. This distinction between self-originating action and actions that are intended to comply with a behavioral demand of someone else is important. Even to the extent our behavior may be predictable it is still free provided it is an action that is self-selected. It is not true that we are free because our actions are not predictable.
Anything that is complex can be difficult to predict, not necessarily because it isn't predictable in principle, but because we would need to know about many physical properties and interactions that would require technology that we don't have. Also, the process of measuring things on the small scale can disturb the activity that is being measured. Predictability tends to diminish with time, so even with future technology we may be able to predict a given behavioral choice only a second or less in advance. That future is almost here as neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can translate information obtained from monitoring neurons into behavioral predictions, albeit in restricted contexts and without complete accuracy. But even to the extent that we could reliably predict behaviors, those predicted behaviors would still be free behaviors.
I also disagree that behaviors being unpredictable equates with free will or that either is necessary for morality. Free will is about minds having agency that is free from materialistic cause and effect constraints. Morality is about actions or inactions that harm or constrain people and our environment. They are different concepts and morality is not dependent on behaviors being unpredictable.
In the monthly WASH bulletin there is another article on free will titled "Free will and Hell" written by he coordinator of the Baltimore chapter. As before, it describes Daniel Dennett's perspectives as he discussed them at John Hopkins University. I will spare the readers a discussion of every one of my disagreements and agreements with that article in detail. Instead I will briefly comment on the start of the third paragraph which follows:
"A concept of free will is necessary for morality because no individual can predict exactly what another will do. Many human actions are based on internal motivations or patterns of neurons that can't be observed. The actions appear random to anyone who doesn't know the person. The behavior is not free in the sense of being undetermined by physical causes, but it is free in the sense of being unpredictable by a casual observer."
We are free provided that we are not compelled to act according to someone else's dictate. This distinction between self-originating action and actions that are intended to comply with a behavioral demand of someone else is important. Even to the extent our behavior may be predictable it is still free provided it is an action that is self-selected. It is not true that we are free because our actions are not predictable.
Anything that is complex can be difficult to predict, not necessarily because it isn't predictable in principle, but because we would need to know about many physical properties and interactions that would require technology that we don't have. Also, the process of measuring things on the small scale can disturb the activity that is being measured. Predictability tends to diminish with time, so even with future technology we may be able to predict a given behavioral choice only a second or less in advance. That future is almost here as neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can translate information obtained from monitoring neurons into behavioral predictions, albeit in restricted contexts and without complete accuracy. But even to the extent that we could reliably predict behaviors, those predicted behaviors would still be free behaviors.
I also disagree that behaviors being unpredictable equates with free will or that either is necessary for morality. Free will is about minds having agency that is free from materialistic cause and effect constraints. Morality is about actions or inactions that harm or constrain people and our environment. They are different concepts and morality is not dependent on behaviors being unpredictable.
Neutral Monism
By Gary Berg-Cross
My education was a bit
deficient so I don’t remember running into the idea of neutral monism as part
of my training in Psychology and the questions of world materialism and mind idealism. A new book by Thomas
Nagel is provocatively entitle: “Mindand Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost
Certainly False.” It features a skeptical take on materialism, but a naturalistic
and not theistic alternative. Nagel is well known for an interesting and influential 1974 paper called "What is it like to be a bat?" He used the bat view of the world to argue that phenomenological facts about consciousness are not so obviously reducible to physical facts. In his new book he argues that lack of progress in materialistically explaining suggests he is right in rejecting naïve materialist explanations. Early
on Nagel defines materialism succinctly as follows:
Materialism
is the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real, and that a place
must be found in it for mind, if there is such a thing. This would
continue the onward march of physical science, through molecular biology, to
full closure by swallowing up the mind in the objective physical reality from
which it was initially excluded. (p 37)
I’m not convinced by Nagel’s anti-materialist
arguments about the irreducibility of mind rather than matter, although I doubt
reductionist approaches that try to explain everything in reductionist
concepts. I like evolutionary explanations for the emergence of cognition and the related concept of consciousness. But I did find the discussion of neutral monism stimulating, if
only because I had missed its presence in thinkers I had studied. I also appreciated Nagel's conversational style and in Mind and Cosmos and his frank admission that his aim "is not so much to argue against reductionism as to investigate the consequences of rejecting it". This blog is not so much about that as a some intro to neutral monism.
As covered in the Wikipedia entry neutral monism is the
philosophical/metaphysical view that:
the mental and the
physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are
themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view
denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things.
Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff,
in the form of neutral elements that are in themselves neither mental nor
physical. These neutral elements might have the properties of color and shape,
just as we experience those properties. But these shaped and colored elements
do not exist in a mind (considered as a substantial entity, whether
dualistically or physicalistically); they exist on their own.
It’s an exciting idea of
continuity of reality rather than dichotomy and some faint versions of it were
quietly posed in works by some of my favorite philosopher – James, Russell and
Dewey as cited.
OK, it wasn’t just my education. The ideas were probably too subtle for me
to grasp when I dashed over their discussion of mind-body dualism. William
James, for example, followed Peirce in developing Pragmatism as a way of
getting beyond dualist debates on realistic materialism and idealism.
the philosophy of mind
adopted by Russell in his middle period was neutral monism, which denies that
there is any irreducible difference between the mental and the physical and
tries to construct both the mental world and the physical world out of
components which are in themselves neither mental nor physical but neutral. He
adopted this theory because he believed that there was no other way of solving
the problems that beset his earlier dualism (see Russell's
philosophy of mind: dualism). The book in which he developed the theory, The Analysis of Mind (1921), is an
unusual one. The version of neutral monism defended in it is qualified in
several ways and it is enriched with ideas drawn from his reading of
contemporary works on behaviourism and depth psychology. The result is not
entirely consistent, but it is interesting and vital especially where it is
least consistent.
John Dewey followed James in seeing more continuity
between mind and brain than a gulf. Like many my brief exposure to philosophy
courses left me somewhere in the pragmatic camp with a healthy respect for
reality-based materialism as the hull hypothesis. Dewey account of phenomena like intelligence does have a
naturalistic basis that integrates biology & psychology as does Nagels’ new
work. But one is surprised to see have non-reductionist
subjects of intentions and communication ala social psychology as front and
center in Dewey’s new view. It is
interesting to bump into some of these thinker’s metaphysical struggles to
reconceptualize our view of nature to resolve the issues, even if one does not
follow into a form of panpsychism with mind and consciousness everywhere
and everytime in the universe.
Images
Mind-Body Dualism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dualism-vs-Monism.png
Elite Problems
Immigration and defense “experts” are abroad in the
land. At least a look through the
keyhole version of this seems to be what one see’s as part of media coverage of
the early debates on immigration reform and the senate hearing to confirm a new
secretary of defense. To paraphrase one
person’s summary of the latter hearing, the only thing more embarrassing than
Hagel’s answers were the senator’s questions and posturing. We expect some
meritorious discussion of topics, but instead we got what Chris
Hayes (of
MSNBC UP fame) described this way:
“Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing for
Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel was an
omnidirectionally embarrassing debacle for everyone involved.
First there were the Senate Republicans who seethed with
such theatrical contempt for Hagel and his ideas you would have thought the
president had nominated Noam Chomsky for the post (who, incidentally wouldn’t
be my first choice to head the Pentagon but who I’d take over Donald Rumsfeld
in a heartbeat). Republican senator after Republican senator threw
questions at Hagel that even by the debased standards of a nominating hearing
were the cheapest kind of demagoguery and bullying….
If you were a visitor from another country and just listened to Hagel’s
Republican interlocutors you would have had to ask, where did this moral
monster Chuck Hagel come from, where had this seditious dissident been hiding
for the last decade? And the answer, of course is: mostly in the Republican
Senate Caucus!
We expect and deserve more as part
of our democratic republic by the elite folks we send to Congress, but of
course we have grown used to being disappointed by them.
In his
new book, The Twilight of
the Elites: America After Meritocracy, the above mentioned Chris
Hayes takes on a host of issues around our being mis-served by meritorious
elites. He has plenty of evidence to work with just in the recently completed
decade (2000–2010 -aka “a decade of failure”). He doesn’t seem far off in
arguing that every major societal institution has failed in some way. Early on
big businesses collapsed with Enron and Worldcom, and expert auditors and analysts
failed to catch it. The Supreme Court was
more partisan than serenely supreme in deciding Bush v. Gore. Just a bit later in the decade the
Bush administration and our intelligence apparatus failed to protect us from
the 9/11 attack. Who can forgive our corporate media who let us down as the administration
lied and mis-represented info to edge us into 2 wars.
Norman commented more broadly on the media and its weak reporting on who is accountable for what on MSNC:
Norman commented more broadly on the media and its weak reporting on who is accountable for what on MSNC:
ORNSTEIN (7/25/12): Figuring out who to hold accountable is fuzzy now and it’s the biggest one we have, given the way the parties are operating. They not only gridlock and do great damage, as you say, and it really is damage to the country, the fabric of the economy, but they leave voters with little opportunity to figure out who genuinely to blame. And frankly, the press corps is an unindicted co-conspirator to that.In those unaccountable wars the military failed to get us a “win” and when we think of post-war nation rebuilding, well it was a catastrophe. We had years of the RC church engaged in and covering up of sex abuse. Same for the football program at Penn State.
The Bush administration had an inept management approach
to the natural disaster called Katrina. We could add, as Chris does, a view of elite
athletes on steroids. We might cap it
off with the failure of oversight for the housing bubble and then the financial
collapse of unregulated bank practices that crashed our economy. Throw in a
decline in government practice and the elite interdependence, such as Big media
failing to effectively warn society of housing bubbles and leveraged default
swaps. It is a compelling picture of
failure.
Hayes book elucidates his hypotheses of why it all went so
wrong. Part of it concerns specialization and Sociologist Robert Michels’ idea
of the iron law of
oligarchy, published in his 1911Political
Parties. Michels noted (as had Plato and Aristotle before
him) that even political parties and groups ideologically
committed to equality and democracy (yes even in the freethinking community), became
more or less oligarchic in their operation like more unabashed elitist and
aristocratic parties of the right. Michels’ grim conclusion was that it was
impossible for any party, no matter its belief system, to actually bring about
democracy in practice. Oligarchy with its rule by a few, true elites is
inevitable because any institution has to “organize itself” for effective against
the opposition. This self-directed organization in turn requires delegation of
responsibility to someone in charge of specific things and thus with specific
talents (or resources). Institutions and thus society finds itself in a
dependent relation. Over time we are forced to trust and depend on a small
cadre with delegated authority. Thus natural forces lead to an “us and them” –
leaders and following, trusting masses of non-leaders. Of course immigrants are
main targets of such thinking. Michels speaks
of it a great ‘gulf which divides the leaders from the masses.’ The type of
thing we hear in both the immigration and defense confirmation debate and it
abounds in fundamentalist religions where the Mosaic elite speak with God and
the congregation sups on tableted words of wisdom from on high.
Of
course there are institutions who recognize the need for democratic practices
and open voices and I am happy to note that we in the humanist community are
among those that do. One has to go no further that the Humanist Manifesto II,
yes written by old fashion elite thinkers, to see many declared democratic principles and
warnings concerning elite power:
The beginnings of police states, even in
democratic societies, widespread government espionage, and other abuses of
power by military, political, and industrial elites, and the continuance of
unyielding racism, all present a different and difficult social outlook.
Images
Robert
Michels iron law of oligarchy, Political Parties: http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2009/06/newlabour-party-history-23-the-alliance-oligarchy.html
Leave
the thinking to us: http://gulfofmexicooilspillblog.com/2011/01/18/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-blog-iron-law-of-oligarchy-and-gratitude/
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Australia, New Zealand, America
a book review by Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Realising Secularism: Australia and New Zealand, edited by Max Wallace (Australia New Zealand Secular Association, 2010, 161 pp)
Australia, New Zealand and the US have much in common. All three are English-speaking more-or-less democratic former British colonies that largely displaced indigenous peoples. They have similar histories and religious demography. The development of public education in all three was similar. Like the US, Australia has seen a decline in religious affiliation to around 20%, while New Zealand has changed to about 51% nominal Christian and 32% non-religious, according to census figures. All three have seen over the past 40 years or so a rise of the Religious Right.
The three diverge, however, in one very important way. The US originated church-state separation with our Constitution and First Amendment. Australia's constitution has an establishment clause, Section 116, patterned after our First Amendment, which was not invoked until the state aid for church schools case was brought in the 1970s (I was involved in the case) and resulted in a disastrous 6-1 ruling in favor of tax aid for church-run private schools. (The six justices who erroneously preferred a British to an American interpretation of S.116 were knighted by the British crown; the lone dissenter, the distinguished civil libertarian Lionel Murphy, was not.) New Zealand has a very secular history, but no solid guarantee of separation. The US, of course, suffered a setback with our Supreme Court's mistaken approval of Ohio's school voucher plan in Zelman v Simmons-Harris.
Let us note at this point that the word "secular" means "religiously neutral", not "irreligious" or "anti-religious", as the Religious Right would have it.
Just as we have seen in the US, strengthening drives to divert public funds to church-run private schools, so too have these campaigns been active in Australia and New Zealand. Lacking our constitutional protections the advocates of tax aid for nonpublic schools have been succeeding down under. As a result public schools and religious freedom in both countries have taken severe beatings. While we in the US have clobbered the taxes-for-church-schools movement in 27 of 28 statewide referenda, our cousins in Australia and New Zealand have been denied the opportunity to do so. They would surely follow our example if given the chance.
All this is given a thorough airing in Realising Secularisn. This important book is mostly a collection of papers presented at conferences in 2008 in Sydney and Wellington. Superb. Five stars!
Realising Secularism: Australia and New Zealand, edited by Max Wallace (Australia New Zealand Secular Association, 2010, 161 pp)
Australia, New Zealand and the US have much in common. All three are English-speaking more-or-less democratic former British colonies that largely displaced indigenous peoples. They have similar histories and religious demography. The development of public education in all three was similar. Like the US, Australia has seen a decline in religious affiliation to around 20%, while New Zealand has changed to about 51% nominal Christian and 32% non-religious, according to census figures. All three have seen over the past 40 years or so a rise of the Religious Right.
The three diverge, however, in one very important way. The US originated church-state separation with our Constitution and First Amendment. Australia's constitution has an establishment clause, Section 116, patterned after our First Amendment, which was not invoked until the state aid for church schools case was brought in the 1970s (I was involved in the case) and resulted in a disastrous 6-1 ruling in favor of tax aid for church-run private schools. (The six justices who erroneously preferred a British to an American interpretation of S.116 were knighted by the British crown; the lone dissenter, the distinguished civil libertarian Lionel Murphy, was not.) New Zealand has a very secular history, but no solid guarantee of separation. The US, of course, suffered a setback with our Supreme Court's mistaken approval of Ohio's school voucher plan in Zelman v Simmons-Harris.
Let us note at this point that the word "secular" means "religiously neutral", not "irreligious" or "anti-religious", as the Religious Right would have it.
Just as we have seen in the US, strengthening drives to divert public funds to church-run private schools, so too have these campaigns been active in Australia and New Zealand. Lacking our constitutional protections the advocates of tax aid for nonpublic schools have been succeeding down under. As a result public schools and religious freedom in both countries have taken severe beatings. While we in the US have clobbered the taxes-for-church-schools movement in 27 of 28 statewide referenda, our cousins in Australia and New Zealand have been denied the opportunity to do so. They would surely follow our example if given the chance.
All this is given a thorough airing in Realising Secularisn. This important book is mostly a collection of papers presented at conferences in 2008 in Sydney and Wellington. Superb. Five stars!
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