This was published by the Bay of Plenty Times on Thursday, 22 February 2007:
If Maori electorates are “a paternalistic relic of the 19th century”, as your editorial of 3 February states, then the general electorates are a feudal relic of the 13th century. From that period Westminster-style democracies have based their redistribution of electorates on an undefined “community of interest” that usually amounts to a quaint notion that my interests are the same as the person next door. What may have been true for people eight hundred years ago is surely the real anachronism in today’s global village.
Maori people have some choice about their community of interest and many have decided that their ethnicity is more important than their street address. This option should be extended not only to Pacific Islanders, as Tariana Turia proposes, but to any group who feel they can identify their real community of interest better than half a dozen bureaucrats.
Students of electoral systems believe the rest of the world can learn from this unique New Zealand example of proportional representation. Maori achieved universal suffrage 12 years before European men and one day they will be able to boast that they were the first to break away from electorates based purely on geography.
22 February 2007
19 February 2007
Desperate call
My reply to HM Craig was published on Monday, 19 February 2007:
H M Craig’s enthusiasm for the Jewish war god Yahweh and his son, Rabbi Yeshua, (Bay Times, 23 December 2006) is no proof of the truth of what is taught in Bible in Schools. Nor is it any justification for what HM Craig concedes is brain washing. This is particularly the case when the 2006 census figures show yet another dramatic rise in the number of New Zealanders who profess to have “No Religion”. The number has risen to 1.3 million out of a total population of just over 4 million, in other words one in every three Kiwis. (Compare this with just over half a million Anglicans and barely half a million Catholics.) How long before there are more refusals than acceptances of Yahweh’s invitation? No wonder the Bible in Schools gang are prepared to run roughshod over the law of New Zealand. Desperate times call for desperate measures, perhaps.
H M Craig’s enthusiasm for the Jewish war god Yahweh and his son, Rabbi Yeshua, (Bay Times, 23 December 2006) is no proof of the truth of what is taught in Bible in Schools. Nor is it any justification for what HM Craig concedes is brain washing. This is particularly the case when the 2006 census figures show yet another dramatic rise in the number of New Zealanders who profess to have “No Religion”. The number has risen to 1.3 million out of a total population of just over 4 million, in other words one in every three Kiwis. (Compare this with just over half a million Anglicans and barely half a million Catholics.) How long before there are more refusals than acceptances of Yahweh’s invitation? No wonder the Bible in Schools gang are prepared to run roughshod over the law of New Zealand. Desperate times call for desperate measures, perhaps.
18 February 2007
Not business of schools to seek converts
The Bay of Plenty Times published the following on Saturday, 17 February 2007.
It has been well said that the scripture of one age becomes the literature of the next. In that sense the Bible has its place in twenty-first century education alongside the tales of the Greek and Roman gods, whose names we give to the planets, and next to the sagas of the old Norse gods, who give their names to the days of the week. However it would make as much sense to teach the Bible as history, as suggested by Bill Capamagian (Bay Times 28 December 2006), as it would to teach the Iliad or the Odyssey as history.
If Bill read some of these old myths he would learn that Mithra, Adonis and Osiris were just three examples of demi-gods who died and rose from the dead. Far from making Christianity “unique among religions” the death and resurrection of Rabbi Yeshua were par for the course.
It is not the business of schools to seek to convert their pupils to any particular religion. Mainstream New Zealand clearly adopted that principle when establishing the state education system in 1877. Bill Capamagian repeatedly fails to explain why some Christians should be above the law.
It has been well said that the scripture of one age becomes the literature of the next. In that sense the Bible has its place in twenty-first century education alongside the tales of the Greek and Roman gods, whose names we give to the planets, and next to the sagas of the old Norse gods, who give their names to the days of the week. However it would make as much sense to teach the Bible as history, as suggested by Bill Capamagian (Bay Times 28 December 2006), as it would to teach the Iliad or the Odyssey as history.
If Bill read some of these old myths he would learn that Mithra, Adonis and Osiris were just three examples of demi-gods who died and rose from the dead. Far from making Christianity “unique among religions” the death and resurrection of Rabbi Yeshua were par for the course.
It is not the business of schools to seek to convert their pupils to any particular religion. Mainstream New Zealand clearly adopted that principle when establishing the state education system in 1877. Bill Capamagian repeatedly fails to explain why some Christians should be above the law.
11 February 2007
Immaculate Misconception
This appeared in the Bay Times of Friday, 29 December:
It pains me to reveal this in such a public fashion, as I have won many a pub bet on this subject, but your front-page item (Bay Times, 21 December 2006) on the parthenogenesis of Flora, the komodo dragon, perpetuates the common error that the so-called immaculate conception has something to do with the incarnation of Jesus. In fact this could be said to be an immaculate misconception. The Catholic dogma of the immaculate conception teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without original sin so that she could later bear the Son of God. In other words the immaculate conception refers to the conception of Mary not of Jesus. Of course, if anyone would like to bet me a pint of Guinness that I’m wrong …
It pains me to reveal this in such a public fashion, as I have won many a pub bet on this subject, but your front-page item (Bay Times, 21 December 2006) on the parthenogenesis of Flora, the komodo dragon, perpetuates the common error that the so-called immaculate conception has something to do with the incarnation of Jesus. In fact this could be said to be an immaculate misconception. The Catholic dogma of the immaculate conception teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without original sin so that she could later bear the Son of God. In other words the immaculate conception refers to the conception of Mary not of Jesus. Of course, if anyone would like to bet me a pint of Guinness that I’m wrong …
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