I like the organ music, the art works and the parables. But the supernatural stuff moves me not a bit. What a miserable place it would be if all explanation ultimately reverted to supernatural belief. The truth and the search for truth are far more interesting than ghostly stories of how we came to be.

It's the human discovery of billions of galaxies, of black holes, dark matter, and the space-time continuum that fills me with awe and wonder.

Hocus-pocus creation stories can't compete with the beauty, the inspiration and the grandeur of the truth that life has evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

For some unfathomable reason religious people invariably want to push their beliefs on to others. The different religions have fought bloody and terrible wars and the religions have splintered, only to unleash holy horror among one another to prove one supernatural belief system superior to the other.

Sadly, the fighting and the terror continues and shows no sign of abating. We now have modern weapons wielded by medieval religious warriors immune to reason and untroubled by their own holy demise. Somehow they are convinced that blowing themselves up along with innocents advances their religious cause and assures eternal bliss. The greatest crimes have always been committed not by evil men doing wrong but by misguided good men believing they were doing right. Continue reading

Sources

• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Kaitiakitanga

Rodney Hide is a former Member of Parliament and leader of the Act Party.

He agrees with Matt McCarten that successive governments have shown no concern for the poor and downtrodden.

"The transformation of New Zealand society from one in which Jack was every bit as good as his master, and Jack's children had every opportunity to succeed, has occurred in just two generations."

Hide says this change has not been caused by just one policy, "but rather through a multitude of interlocking policies."

In his opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald, Hide gives a lists of nine factors which he says " are just a small sample of how government stomps on the poor and blocks upward mobility."

He says a total policy reversal won't return New Zealand to the egalitarian society it once was.

"That's because two generations of bad policy have embedded an underclass. The problem is now cultural, not political."

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Zimbio